


The Special

by RedHorse



Series: The Special [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU - No Magic, Advent Fic, Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Consent Issues, Dirty Talk, Dubcon Cuddling, Dubious Consent, Feelings, Harry feels great about all of it though, Holidays, Home Renovation, Light BDSM, M/M, Original hardwood floors, Philosophical differences relating to painted trim, Reality TV, Rimming, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, SO, Secret Relationship, Sub Harry Potter, a moral dilemma relating to a solarium, also, daily updates beginning December 1, dubcon romance, winter holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-16 11:02:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 54,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21506824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Harry is an unknown interior designer growing a tiny YouTube vlog following. He can’t believe he somehow gets recruited to a holiday special renovation contest on live TV and judged by the ultra-famous Tom Riddle.Tom Riddle seems impossible to impress when the cameras are on. When they’re turned off is a different story.ADVENT FIC! Posting daily until December 24.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Series: The Special [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575817
Comments: 717
Kudos: 1648
Collections: Highlandspringo's Tomarry Shelf





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Cybrid for the quick and encouraging beta!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my advent fic! I am adding this A/N after completing the fic to address a couple questions that you may have. <3
> 
> I don't use archive warnings on fics with consent issues because I don't know where to draw the line on noncon. In real life, there's no such thing as dubious consent, so while I adore such things in fiction I don't want people to forget that dubcon = noncon, technically, and so there's that.
> 
> But! This isn't a story where anyone does anything he doesn't really, really want to do. And there's a happy ending for the main pairing. This is probably the most feel-good fic I've ever written. I blame the holiday spirit. I hope you enjoy it!

**November 20**

It was a warm fall. Hermione was sweating when she arrived at work. She overheated easily. It still embarrassed her as much as it had when she was a kid. She hated arriving at a morning meeting damp under the arms, the back of her neck, and the tops of her shoulders where her hair fell.

This morning she wasn’t running late, but neither was she quite as early as she preferred to be. So she rushed up the stairs and went directly to the conference room for her morning meeting without stopping at her office. Usually she was the first to arrive in any room, so when she saw Draco Malfoy immediately upon opening the door, she was momentarily taken aback.

“Oh, there you are, Granger,” Malfoy drawled in the cheerful tone he always put on when he was about to be particularly passive-aggressive.  _ Asshole _ . “We were wondering if the stairs had gotten the best of you.”

Hermione’s warm cheeks felt warmer. She was actually in excellent shape — health-conscious, deliberately active. So she wasn’t huffing and puffing from taking the stairs two at a time, but she  _ was _ sweaty. She glanced at the clock, also taking in the empty chairs around the conference table. “It’s only five til,” she said half-defensively, but of course that was rather late for Hermione. “And are you really using the royal ‘we’ Malfoy? You’re the only one here.”

“Oh, no, actually,” said Neville, popping into sight on the far end of the table, beneath which he’d apparently been rummaging. His hair was messy and he was holding up a handful of haphazard folders taken from the satchel between his knees. “I’m here too.”

“I see,” Hermione said, with her first sincere smile of the morning. Though they kept things professional at work, she and Neville were old friends, though their relationship had been somewhat complicated by Neville’s abrupt transition from colleague to boss when his grandmother retired suddenly and handed him the reins. “Good morning, Mr. Longbottom. I didn’t know you were back from your holiday.”

“Oh, yes, we came back early,” Neville said, gesturing with the folders in a way that caused their contents to nearly slip free. The sight of so much organizational chaos made Hermione’s head throb, but she forced herself not to snatch everything from his hands and spend the next five minutes alphabetizing.

“I hope you had a nice time,” she said calmly instead, easing herself into a chair and ignoring Draco Malfoy’s ongoing snickers.

“Yeah, we did. Awesome time, really great. Hannah took a ton of photos. You can probably see them on Facebook.”

“I’ll definitely check it out.”

Hermione’s assistant showrunners, Oliver and Padma, came in, as well as Colin, Neville’s well-meaning but perpetually-nervous assistant. They all sat down and Hermione took out her notebook and pencil, laying them neatly on the table in front of her, anticipating that Neville would kick off the meeting but that she would take the lead. She could still hardly believe she was showrunner on a live holiday special that would feature the network’s hottest talent. If she was one for pinching herself, her arms would be sore.

But Neville just gazed at the door with a little frown, then looked at his watch.

“Who are we waiting on?” Malfoy asked. Hermione forced herself to look politely in his direction. He was leaning all the way back in his chair with his arms folded behind his head, which pulled his already excessively-fitted shirt tighter across his skinny chest. 

“Just the talent, I imagine,” Neville said, moving around the folders which he’d finally put down. “Isn’t your client famous for being on time, Malfoy?”

Draco sat bolt upright. Hermione frowned at the violence of his reaction, though she too was surprised.

“You don’t mean  _ Riddle  _ is coming to this meeting?”

Now Neville looked surprised too. “Didn’t you know?” Hermione’s expression must have been answer enough, because he looked to Draco. “Didn’t  _ you _ know?”

“I did not,” Draco said tersely. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“He hasn’t come to any of the other producers’ meetings,” Hermione said, baffled. “Why this one?”

Neville shrugged. “He wanted to approve the contestant list. Wrote a nice letter all about it. Scented stationery, very classy. Draco, you really didn’t know?”

“Obviously  _ not _ , or I would never have worn  _ last year’s suit _ , or consented to this...space.” Draco gestured wildly at the unobtrusive conference room. Granted there wasn’t much to be said for it, but it was suitably grand, as corporate headquarters went. Hermione began to wonder exactly what kind of a monster Tom Riddle actually was, if he had Malfoy this worked up. She’d always suspected that his sterling reputation was a veneer.

“Well, it’s not quite nine yet. He’s got time,” Neville said comfortably, apparently oblivious to Draco’s rising hysteria.

Before Malfoy could combust, the door opened, revealing Tom Riddle himself. He was even taller and more airbrushed-looking in person than he was on television. Hermione, reluctantly impressed, got out of her chair and smoothed her skirt, glad she’d cooled down so her palm was dry when she held out her hand. But before she could introduce herself, Malfoy had sprung to his feet as well.

Fully transformed from the sarcastic bastard lounging in the chair when Hermione arrived into a painfully-harried-looking version of himself, Malfoy bodily inserted himself between Hermione and his client.

“Good morning, Mr. Riddle,” he said brightly. “How was the drive?”

Hermione bit back her irritation and took the opportunity to study the star of the network. She’d once seen him pass through a room, but he’d been surrounded by a flurry of other people and she hadn’t gotten a good look. He was just as lean and elegantly-dressed as he was on television or in print, in his trademark black suit with a bright tie, emerald and gold, in an intricate print. His cheeks were remarkably smooth for a man with such dark hair, and his eyes were intense, focused on Malfoy with a sort of puzzled amusement, like they’d never met.

“Oh, it was very nice, Draco. Thank you for asking.” He looked around the room, taking in the table that someone had probably spent five figures on, the sleek minimalist chairs and the unimposing art as though he’d be sullied by mere proximity. But when his gaze landed first on Neville and then on Hermione, his expression resettled into a pleasant, razor-sharp attention that made Hermione worry she was going to overheat again. Before she could overthink it, she stepped around Malfoy and extended her hand a second time.

“Mr. Riddle. I’m Hermione Granger. The new showrunner.”

“Great meeting you,” he said, taking her hand at once. His palm engulfed hers, cool and smooth, and she caught a faint scent of something vaguely spicy. Expensive. He let go of her with a pleasant smile, then took a few steps to shake Neville’s hand as well.

“And young Mr. Longbottom, our executive savant,” he said. People were constantly remarking on Neville’s age in a way that made Hermione grind her teeth, but somehow when Tom Riddle did it, it just seemed like sincere flattery. Neville seemed to take it that way; she saw his cheeks go pink and his shy smile as he shook the offered hand.

“Oh, well, it’s nice to see you again, Mr. Riddle,” he said, looking bashfully down at the table before sinking back into his chair. 

“Tom, please,” said Tom Riddle magnanimously, and circled back around the table to introduce himself to each and every person, including the hovering Colin, who had taken a chair in the corner, the unofficial position of an assistant. Hermione was reluctantly impressed.

Riddle settled one chair to Draco’s right, so he faced the door and Hermione. “I apologize for making you wait.” 

“Not at all!” Neville assured him at once. “We’d only just sat down. We’re glad you could make time to join us. I appreciate how invested you are in seeing that we have a great pool of contestants.” 

Tom Riddle smiled serenely at the head of the network, crossing his legs in one smooth motion, and loosely clasped his hands together on his elevated knee. “It’s no problem at all.”

“Great! Well, here we have them,” Neville said, tapping the messy pile of folders. “Sorry they’re not on a screen.” He pointed with an exaggerated shudder to the dark and neglected screen on the far wall.

Riddle smiled warmly. “I’ve also been called old-fashioned.”

Colin passed around the folders while Neville explained how impersonal it felt to him to look at photographs of people on a projector, instead of on paper, and Riddle nodded along with solemn attention. 

Hermione opened the cover of her folder to see the first of several familiar headshots. She’d carefully assembled all the people in the final cut from the original, vast pool of six thousand, based on a painstaking process derived from sixteen separate measures. She had a graph and three charts she hadn’t bothered to load on her flash drive for the meeting, knowing Neville would keep things analog.

Malfoy was giving his copies a cursory once-over. He’d informally approved everything weeks before with a one-word email. 

Tom Riddle hadn’t looked at them at all. He continued to sit with his hands on his knee, his shoulders at a slight angle so his tie fell to one side. Considering her business Hermione should really have been better at this kind of thing, but she still hadn’t identified the pattern on the tie. She knew it was classic, she knew it had a name, and it was definitely familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“I have a suggestion,” said Riddle. 

Hermione participated in the room’s collective deep breath. When the talent made a “suggestion,” particularly talent on the scale of Tom Riddle, it was a mandate

Seeing he had their attention, he reached into his jacket pocket and removed a photograph. Hermione caught enough of a glimpse to see that it was a YouTube screenshot of a dark-haired young man, but there must have been something off about the quality, because his eyes were unnaturally green. He had a pleasing smile, Hermione noticed instantly, with professional detachment. Good teeth. Nice bone structure. Overall, a very marketable look.

“Harry Potter,” Tom Riddle said, sliding the photograph toward Neville in a little motion designed to attract Colin. It worked, of course; he rushed to pick it up from the table and walk it over to his boss, who took it without looking away from Riddle, a fixed, pleasant smile on his face. 

“He would be a valuable addition,” Riddle went on.

“The vlogger?” Draco asked skeptically, apparently recognizing the name. When Riddle gave him a cool look, he blanched and swallowed. “I’m familiar with him. That’s a very novel idea, Mr. Riddle.”

“Thank you,” Riddle said tonelessly. “I do value your opinion, of course, Draco.” He turned his expectant look toward Nevillle. “And what do  _ you _ think, Mr. Longbottom?”

“Well,” Neville frowned at the photo. “I’m not sure I understand. Is this someone you know, Mr. Riddle?”

“I don’t know him,” Riddle said. “I’ve seen his videos. I think he has talent, and a dedicated following.”

Hermione wasn’t sure one thousand subscribers was a sufficient guarantee of this Harry Potter’s appeal, dedicated though they might be. 

“I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Riddle. Was he one of the original applicants?” Neville glanced apologetically at Hermione, but she understood his hands were tied.

So were hers. If Riddle wanted the kid, they’d have to try and get him.

“He was not,” Hermione said. She didn’t have to look back at her records to know. She remembered quite a bit about each of the thousands of applicants. It was just the way her mind worked. Harry Potter had not been among them. “But, of course, I trust Mr. Riddle’s judgment.” She smiled at Riddle, who smiled back with satisfaction and unclasped his hands.

“And I trust yours,” he said with a quick smile that made Hermione forgive him instantly for all the trouble he had just caused. “Which is why I’ll leave the rest of the final details in your capable hands.” He stood up, and so did the rest of them, in the manner of peasants in the presence of a king. But even as Hermione was annoyed, she felt her heart rate speed up when Riddle turned his attention on her a final time, coming back around the table to clap Neville on his shoulder, then pausing in front of Hermione.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Granger.”

“Thank you,” she said, and because she was flustered and it was at eye level, she blurted, “That’s a great tie.”

“Why, thank you,” Riddle said at once, as though nothing she said could ever be ridiculous. Then he leaned in, so she got another whiff of his cologne. “It’s toile,” he murmured, and pulled back with a wink and a final squeeze of her hand.

She felt a little dazed as he swept from the room, but it was clear that at least one aspect of Tom Riddle’s reputation was certain. Everyone who met him fell a little in love with him. 

“So,” Neville said, drawing her back to the present. He was slouching in his chair with a furrow in his brow. “How many days til production starts, again?”

Hermione pressed her lips together. “December 1. A solid...ten days.”

“Oh, plenty of time,” Neville moaned, rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry, Hermione.”

“No, no,” she said at once, with confidence she didn’t really feel. “It’s fine. It’s the nature of live television. I can handle it. That’s why you chose me as showrunner,” she reminded him.

Neville smiled, looking relieved. “Of course, Hermione. I can always count on you. So, this Harry Potter? You’ll get him?”

Hermione’s smile stayed steady even as her stomach turned over. “Absolutely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> Harry had always wanted to meet Tom Riddle, but he hadn’t expected that it would ever happen at all. Or if it did, not like this: shoved face-first against the door he’d hand-painted that afternoon. A door which was barely dry and still smelled so strongly of fumes it went straight to Harry’s head. Or maybe his dizziness was the result of having his hands pinned above his head while Tom Riddle, television star and icon, reached around Harry’s waist and dipped his hand into his jeans.


	2. The Preliminaries, Part One

**November 21**

“I’m sorry, _what_?” 

Harry held the phone away from his ear for a moment to squint at the number on the screen, just to make sure this wasn’t some kind of transparent prank, but the number, based on a hasty google search, did appear to originate from CLN studios in Chicago, and beneath the headshot of a girl with frizzy ringlets and a determined close-mouthed smile was the name “Hermione Granger.”

“We’d like to cast you in our upcoming holiday special. We begin taping November thirtieth. Are you available?”

Excitement and suspicion were at war in Harry’s mind, but if this was some kind of a scam, they’d chosen their target poorly. He had, at last check, $85.72 in his bank account.

Harry thought through all the various ways he’d heard of people getting conned out of something based on phone calls and emails that were too good to be true, and asked warily, “I don’t have to advance payment for airfare?”

There was a moment’s pause before the woman on the other end of the phone said, slowly, “No. What?”

“Or give you my social security number and bank account information over the phone?"

“We’ll need your social security number at some point for tax reasons. Is that — is there some reason you’re asking these particular questions?”

“I’m just making sure.” Her tone made Harry feel a little silly. “That this is the real deal, you know. It’s pretty weird. Being called and asked to fly to — where was it again?”

“Titan, Ohio.”

“Ohio! In seven days.”

“I understand,” she said, sounding weary. “I know it’s short notice, and that makes all of this very strange. But when your name was raised at our last meeting we all felt like you were a vital addition, Mr. Potter.”

Hermione Granger didn’t sound much older than Harry, so hearing her call him “Mr. Potter” made the moment even more surreal.

“If it would make you feel more comfortable, I could fly down to St. Louis so we could talk in person.”

Harry leaned his elbows on the edge of the table. “I don’t think that’s necessary.” He glanced at the calendar displayed on his second monitor. The one that had a web of hairline cracks from the time he’d been reckless with a belt sander during a live stream. His calendar was displayed there. “I really can’t, anyway,” he said with a sigh. “I have to work.”

“Mr. Potter, this _is_ work. I’m offering you a paid position on the cast.”

Harry scratched his head, perking up. “Oh? Paid?”

“Yes, of course! I’m sorry, it’s not — I usually don’t handle this part. I should have led with that. The compensation is expenses plus two thousand dollars base pay per round you avoid elimination. And the winner will receive a twenty-thousand-dollar grand prize.”

Harry didn’t say anything. He wasn’t great at math — but she’d said earlier in the call the contest had nine rounds, which put the potential earnings at — almost the entirety of his income the entire past year.

Not that that was saying much.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, then realized he'd just cursed and bit his lip. “Er, sorry.”

There was a surprised, soft chuckle from Hermione Granger. “It’s fine. So — that’s a yes, right?” She sounded relieved.

“Um,” Harry said, drawing out the _m_ , and looked at his calendar again, wincing. “No. It’s a no.”

“Of course. I can negotiate compensation to a point, if you have a number in mind.”

“What?” Harry exclaimed. “No! Oh my God, it’s not the money! That’s...that’s a lot of money. To me.”

A moment’s pause. “Then, what…?”

Harry rubbed a hand through his hair so it stood up, a better reflection of his inner turmoil. “I’m scheduled for a job. I can’t just flake out.”

“We would be happy to assist in negotiating a contract termination with your client, Mr. Potter.”

Frustrated, Harry sighed. “Okay, hold on a sec. I’m going to have to ask you to stop calling me ‘Mr. Potter.’ It’s freaking me out.”

“Okay, Mr. — that is, um, Harry,” said Hermione Granger.

“I don’t have a contract, exactly. I just…” He felt, suddenly, like an idiot. “Well, I said I would.”

“And what is the...service?”

“Oh, some interior repainting, I think.” Mrs. Figg hadn’t been really clear, just saying she wanted to “spruce things up for her Christmas guests,” but she’d mentioned several times that she thought the maroon walls had created an unpleasant, cave-like quality. Harry couldn’t agree more.

Hermione Granger was quiet. Harry thought for a moment they might have been disconnected. Then she said, “I’m sure we can arrange for an alternative provider to fulfill the service.”

Harry didn’t think Mrs. Figg would particularly welcome strangers barging into her house, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought that if anyone would support Harry seizing an opportunity, she would. He had never once backed out of a job, but maybe she could be convinced to let a replacement do the work. Harry could even pay for it, he thought faintly, with just the first day’s pay even if he was eliminated right away. Hell, if he was eliminated right away, he’d still have time to paint her living room himself.

“Well,” he said, searching for another excuse, even as another part of him had wanted to say yes immediately.

While he hesitated, Hermione Granger uttered a muffled one-syllable word that told Harry his earlier swearing couldn’t have offended her sensibilities. 

“Are we back to compensation?”

“No!” Harry said, startled. Then, because he needed to make a point, “I accept all the original terms you gave me. Thank you very much.”

“Well!” Hermione Granger said, sounding relieved and like a real, sincere person for the first time since the call began. “Then it’s all settled. We’ll email your flight confirmation. How many checked bags will you need?”

“Er…” Harry gazed around his studio apartment. He didn’t own any luggage except his computer bag. “None?”

Hermione Granger laughed tightly. “I’ll put you down for TBD, and you can let them know when you check in. It’s hard to plan packing in advance for a business trip, I know.”

“Right,” Harry said. Just when he thought the call couldn’t become more surreal, he was now picturing himself bringing a month’s worth of clothing — if he was being optimistic about his chances — to Titan, Ohio — wherever that was? — in the same way he’d brought it from his last apartment to this one: in four large black trash bags.

“I’ll also send all my contact information and your itinerary via email, and an assistant producer will contact you in case you have questions in the morning or any time prior to your flight next week. I look forward to working with you, Mr. Potter.”

“You too,” Harry said, and waited until he heard a dial tone before slowly setting down his phone.

He glanced up at the computer screen. He’d been answering comments on his last vlog when he got the call from Hermione Granger. He had somehow gone from overthinking the phrasing of his response to one of his precious five regular commenters on the shaky, amateur videos he’d been publishing, to running through a checklist of what he’d have to do to prepare to travel out of state in a week then appear on live television in less than two.

An impulse seized him and he typed into the same search window he’d just used to legitimize Hermione Granger. “CLN holiday special,” he entered.

His shitty internet caused a few long seconds’ lag before the results popped up. At the top was a familiar, perfect, smiling face. Tom Riddle. To the left of the image was the caption: _RIDDLE TO HOST AND JUDGE LIVE HOLIDAY SPECIAL._ _Twenty candidates will compete for a $20,000 grand prize over the course of the twenty-five days in December leading up to Christmas, live on CLN. These designers from across the US will be renovating a selection of abandoned homes in Titan, Ohio to restore an historic American neighborhood to its former glory, just in time for the Christmas!_

Tom Riddle. Hermione Granger hadn’t mentioned _Tom Riddle_. Harry had looked up to him since he first saw his show, one night when Vernon had left the television on and a rerun played. Shortly thereafter, Harry, inspired, had dragged around the living room set to maximize the architecture and natural light. He was thirteen years old and the Dursleys hadn’t thanked him for it.

Harry only did the vlogs because he got a few hundred bucks a month in advertising dollars, and sometimes that made all the difference when business was slow. He didn’t mind the (small) spotlight, but it wasn’t something he’d ever sought out, either.

The immensely larger platform promised by the contest intimidated him, but the money baited the trap irresistibly. The prospect of meeting Tom Riddle in the process made Harry suddenly happy to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> "Well," said Ron, leaning in close, a small shower of drywall dust falling from his hair and into Harry's face, making him glad he had on his glasses, "you didn't hear this from me, but _supposedly_ someone was thrown out so they could sub another person in at the last minute." 
> 
> Harry stared at him with dawning horror. Ron, oblivious, went on in a conspiratorial whisper. 
> 
> "They say it was someone Riddle picked out personally. Went to the meeting and 'asked' for this contestant himself."


	3. The Preliminaries, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbetaed! Point out any egregious errors but I hope you can enjoy it anyway. ❤️

Harry was in Titan, Ohio. He’d cashed in his plane ticket and taken a bus. Or rather, a series of buses. It had been an experience. A litany of young producers all wearing flannel and bright-colored scarves had been guiding him around the aptly-named site village, which seemed to cover at least a square mile of vacant land with a view of the high school football stadium in one direction and several fields of mown farmland in all the others.

While his head was still spinning, the producer he kept getting handed back to—whom he was fairly sure was named Violet—clapped her hands together. “Now for the most important thing! Your crew.” She struck off, leaving Harry with no choice but to follow.

“Crew?” he asked her, hurrying to keep up.

“Did you think you were going to remodel an entire house by yourself?” she asked with a puzzled smile, and at the look on his face she laughed, then winced. “Oh, you  _ did _ . Well, that’s not the case. Oh my God, can you imagine? And in  _ one _ month? But no, you’ll have eight guys to help you fulfill your vision in each room!”

Harry, thinking that last line  _ had _ to come from a script, followed after her, his racing thoughts turning inward. To be honest, he hadn’t really known how he would tackle each room in the allotted time frame, but he’d trusted there would at least be an even playing field and he was as capable as anyone else. The idea of being able to do real restoration or rebuilding excited him, but the idea of being forced to work with strangers made him nervous.

Violet looked down at the clipboard she was holding, then up at a cluster of men and women in hooded sweatshirts in various colors, printed with the special’s name across the front.

“Ron Weasley?” she called. A tall young man about Harry’s age, at least a head taller than the next tallest person in the group, swung around with an easy grace and smiled instantly at the sight of Harry, the most unreserved welcome Harry could ever remember receiving, somehow only enhanced by the fact he had his mouth full of something and was still chewing as he walked over.

Ron stuck his hand out and Harry shook it.

“Nice to meet you! Harry, isn’t it?” Ron shoved whatever he’d been eating in his pocket and Harry heard the crinkle of plastic wrappers, telling him that wasn’t Ron’s first snack that morning.

“Harry Potter,” Harry confirmed, liking him at once. Harry had learned he could trust his first impressions about people, and felt immense relief that he’d be working with Ron. He had a feeling they’d make a great team.

“I’ll leave you to introduce Harry to the others,” Violet said briskly. “Take care, Harry. I’ll see you soon I’m sure!” Off she went, colorful scarf trailing behind.

Ron was looking at Harry with interest. “So, ever done anything like this before?” 

“Not at all,” Harry said with a nervous laugh, looking around the part of the village where they’d wound up with trepidation and a total lack of orientation. “I’ve been lost ten times this morning.”

Ron smiled. “Well, I grew up doing this stuff, but I still get confused sometimes. Don’t worry about it. And if you have questions and don’t want to ask the producers, feel free to ask me! I’ll help however I can.”

Taken aback, Harry’s smile wavered, touched. “Thanks, Ron. That’s really great of you.”

Ron’s cheeks went briefly pink and he rubbed the back of his neck, making his sweatshirt hood flop. “Don’t mention it. Do you wanna see the rest of the shop?” He pointed to the large, industrial-looking building beyond, where more people in sweatshirts seemed to be trailing in and out. Harry had no idea what the shop entailed, but nodded gamely and followed Ron inside.

It was a veritable boutique lumberyard, full of all the basics: screws, nails, racks of tools and stacks of pristine new drywall. But there were also bundles of fine woods, stacks of luxury granite and marble, and random clusters of other fixtures and finishes sorted by style or era.

“Wow,” Harry said, sincerely impressed, though he supposed something like this was to be expected given the demands of a live production with work on several houses to be completed each day.

In a little makeshift workstation composed of a folding table and a randomly-situated jigsaw on a stand, two extension cords giving it power from the nearest outlet halfway across the space, Ron had apparently been making a complex drywall cutout to get a feel for the machine.

“I know lots of people lean toward plaster, or the pre-milled stuff, but there’s nothing I can’t make out of drywall,” Ron said proudly. “This would make a bold ceiling accent, wouldn’t it?” He held the ornate-cut drywall sheet above his head demonstratively, and a shower of drywall dust inundated him immediately, like drifting snow.

“Fuck,” he swore, coughing. Harry tried and failed not to laugh. Ron’s glare was rueful though as he wiped his face on his arm.

“I just did that to make you laugh,” Ron said, grinning. “You know, to break the ice. I’m that kind of guy.”

Harry’s laughter faded but he could still feel himself grinning wide. It felt good; the first sincere smile he’d managed in longer than he wanted to admit.

“We’re going to get along great, I can tell.” But when Harry looked around again, he felt a wave of unease at the obvious scale of the production. It was so far from a few half-assed YouTube videos that he felt a little bit like Cinderella, but in the darker version of the tale which he remembered including self-mutilation and attempted murder.

“Don’t worry, honestly,” Ron assured him, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “You won’t be the least-prepared person here, believe me. And even if you are, no one will mind. There’s much more irresistible drama to be had on-set.”

Harry looked over with a pained smile. “Are you sure about that?”

"Well," said Ron, leaning in close, a small shower of drywall dust falling from his hair and into Harry's face, making him glad he had on his glasses, "you didn't hear this from me, but  _ supposedly _ someone was thrown out so they could sub another person in at the last minute."

Harry stared at him with dawning horror. Ron, oblivious, went on in a conspiratorial whisper.

"They say it was someone Riddle picked out personally. Went to the meeting and 'asked' for this contestant himself."

Harry could think of absolutely nothing to say, but Ron had already moved on. “Well, let me go introduce you to the rest of the crew, yeah?”

Harry followed Ron mindlessly through the milling crowds. Ron couldn’t really be talking about  _ Harry _ , could he? On the one hand, who could have been a more last-minute addition than Harry, who hadn’t even said yes, let alone signed a contract, until a little over a week ago? On the other hand, it was utterly impossible that  _ Tom Riddle _ had  _ personally _ asked for  _ Harry _ to be on the show. Maybe some of Ron’s information was correct—Harry was a last-minute substitution, almost certainly—but just as much of it must be bogus.

They came upon a group of people on the edge of the village where there were tables and chairs arranged in the center of a semicircle of food trucks. The trucks were shuttered in the downtime between breakfast and lunch. The group wore hoodies that were the same green color as Ron’s, and Harry realized suddenly that the crews were wearing color-coded attire, and apparently the bright emerald clothing meant they were working with Harry. 

“Hey, guys,” Ron called, and the group looked around. Ron introduced them one-by-one: Padma Patil, Lavender Brown, Dean Thomas, and Seamus Finnegan.

“We’ve got my brothers as well, but they’ve run off to fuck-knows-where,” Ron said, then his eyes widened as though only just realizing what he’d said. “I’m sorry, Harry. My language is fucking—I mean, er, terrible.”

Harry laughed. “You won’t offend me.”

Ron let out a deep breath, still red-faced. “That’s good, because to be honest I can’t filter it. Not even around my mom. Made Thanksgiving pretty difficult this week, let me tell you.”

“The trick is to ignore everything he says, and he’ll never offend you,” advised Lavender, tucking back a strand of blond hair that had escaped from her high, smooth ponytail. She shot Ron a sly look. 

“It’s great to meet you, Harry!” said Seamus. “I thought I’d heard of everyone here. I’m kind of a huge nerd for reno blogs.”

“Oh, well, I don’t have many followers,” Harry said slowly, looking awkwardly from one expectant face to the next.

“That’s fine,” Dean said smoothly, interrupting and sticking out his hand to shake Harry’s. “This show should be a great launch for a relative unknown.”

“So, Harry,” Ron said, clapping his hands together. “What do you have in mind for the prelims?”

“Er,” said Harry. He didn’t even know the task for the preliminary round yet. He kept meaning to ask the producers after it became obvious they thought he already knew. It must have been part of some earlier dissemination, from before he was brought on.

Lavender was watching him with careful attention. She bent over next to a backpack leaned up against the chair she’d been straddling and pulled out a slim bound volume about the size and shape of an owner’s manual.

“Want to see the script?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Harry said at once, smiling at her gratefully. A thoughtful silence fell over the group and Harry realized he might have given too much away, and yet he also wasn’t sure he should be self-conscious. There wasn't anything wrong with being a regular person. “I don’t know anything about television,” he told them frankly. 

Ron was looking at him with vague mortification, and Harry realized that the moment they’d shared in the shop was replaying in Ron’s mind in a new light. He felt guiltily responsible for the blotchy flush that bloomed in Ron’s cheeks.l as he inevitably realized  _ Harry _ was the last minute substitution.

Harry met his eye and tried to smile reassuringly to let him know there were no hard feelings. Ron swallowed, eyes still wide, and smiled back uncertainly.

Harry opened the script and looked at the first few pages, having no idea what to expect. Was he supposed to learn  _ lines _ ?

The answer seemed to be  _ no _ , or at least, if he had lines they weren’t in this script. It was much more general than that, just mentioning shots that needed to occur and a tentative order. They would all be introduced very briefly and their work given no more than a once-over. In order to see all twenty houses in the allotted hour and introduce the show as a whole, each preliminary round contestant was only allotted about four minutes of live action. 

Less than five minutes on screen with Tom Riddle.

Harry’s skin tingled. He bunched the script in his hands as he withheld the impulse to drop it and rub his hands up and down his forearms where he could feel gooseflesh.

“So,” he said briskly, looking up at the crew, all of whom were watching him with a range of expressions, from openly curious in Lavender’s case to doubtful in Seamus’. “Preliminary rounds are the front elevation. And we have six hours. Fantastic.” He handed Lavender the script and clapped his hands together. “This’ll be fun.” He wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince—them or himself—but it seemed to work better in the crew’s case than Harry’s. They all grinned and Ron even gave a half-serious cheer, pumping his arm above his head.

“Team Potter!” he cried, loud enough a few passersby turned to look, but Harry wasn’t embarrassed at all. He was just excited.

He could do this. He could. He’d give Tom Riddle the most impressive five minutes of screen time in his entire career.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> “An undeniably daring choice,” said the host, looking away from the front door to study Tom Riddle instead. She rested one hand on the wrought-iron fence that Harry had installed at the last minute then draped with an understated natural garland. He thought it gave the perfect, classy finish to the building’s bold street face. 
> 
> Standing next to the host, tall and composed and understated-festive in a black pea coat and red scarf, Tom was perfectly expressionless. 
> 
> “Well, Tom,” prompted the host, “what do you think?”
> 
> Harry waited, trying not to hold his breath, for Tom to answer.
> 
> Tom calmly looked at a spot over Harry’s head with a scathing expression. On camera it would look like he was pinning Harry to the spot, but in reality most of the effect was lost by the total absence of eye contact. It was like he knew where Harry was standing, but Harry was so beneath his notice he was invisible.
> 
> “I think,” he said slowly, “there are good reasons I don’t watch YouTube.”


	4. The Preliminaries, Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Happy December second!
> 
> A couple notes on process; this fic is very much a first draft. I’m posting the chapters as I write them so there may be mistakes and subtle inconsistencies (though I hope not!).
> 
> That being said, if there’s something you want to see please let me know in the comments and I’ll try to work it in — within reason!
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

The house Harry was assigned was a charming 1920s bungalow. He walked the house with the entire crew, Lavender frowning the entire time, Ron grinning in delight, and Dean and Seamus with their heads bent together arguing alternately murmuring to each other and typing furiously on their phones.

Catching Harry’s look in their direction, Lavender rolled her eyes. “They can’t stay out of the comments section,” she explained.

The floors were beaten up. Someone had painted the woodwork at some point and it had recently been stripped. Harry could still smell the ammonia. The house was larger than it looked from the outside, with two interesting surprises for a house with just two bedrooms: on the ground floor there were well-preserved doors that led to a wood-paneled office with its own fireplace, and at the back of the house, hidden from view on the street, was a six-hundred-square-foot solarium.

“Wow,” Ron said with a short whistle, looking up at the broken upper windows.

Lavender frowned down at the floor and scuffed it with the toe of her boot. The solarium had obviously been abandoned for awhile; there was almost as much refuse on the floor as there was on the concrete driveway outside.

Harry pivoted slowly. “ _ Amazing _ .”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Ron said, frowning, “but think practically, Harry. What can you do with this space before the whole-house walk-through? We should think about taking it off.”

Harry looked at Ron with the same look on his face he would have had if Ron was a surgeon recommending amputation of a healthy limb.

“Are you  _ fucking with me _ ?”

Ron frowned but didn’t backpedal. He pointed to the anchorpoints where the framing for the glass panels met the wall. “They’ve already put in the separation,” he said, meaning the incongruous new construction that was the dubious exterior wall shutting off the solarium from the rest of the house, when in the original build it would have been integrated.

“Think about it, Harry,” said Lavender lowly. “You’d need about four specialists to get this thing functioning in the time we have. And even then it might not be enough. If you take it off, we could maybe add some French doors here. Create a patio. I’m a great bricklayer.”

Harry could barely look at them. The heathens. But he didn’t have time to have a tantrum. He had the front elevation to think of.

The house was certainly more charming inside than out. Part of the problem with the front elevation was that it lacked any real dimension, but of course building even a tiny porch or installing dormers on the ceiling were more than an afternoon’s work.

Ron’s twin brothers appeared just in time to erect the scaffolding and repaint. They were energetic and seemed to be laughing at Harry constantly, but not in a way that he could quite bring himself to take offense. He’d chosen green paint with dark red trim, a classic combination for a Craftsman-era build like this one and a shameless ploy to fact the show was a Christmas special.

Lavender and Ron helped him uninstall the hideous lattice porch railing someone had put in, probably in the nineties, and Harry welded a simple wrought-iron replacement together himself. The cameras took a lot of interest in this step, particularly when Harry shed his jacket in the heat of the shop and bent over the last few welds in his sweat-damp t-shirt.

Harry had initially decided he'd ignore the cameras, but he felt so stiff and awkward he was almost physically clumsy, something he’d never experienced before in his life. So he tried instead to actively engage with the cameramen—he learned their names and joked around with them a little until he looked at the cameras and just thought of the friendly people behind them. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it at least let him get on with the work.

With an hour left and the sun starting to set, Harry stood on the sidewalk with Lavender.

“It looks good,” she said for the third time. “You need to chill out.”

Harry scratched his left wrist with his right thumbnail, a bad habit from childhood he’d never been able to break. “It’s not right. It’s so flat.”

“We could put in a couple more of those little evergreens,” Lavender suggested, tipping her head to one side.

The landscaping had helped pull the house forward, but it still wasn’t enough. 

“If only I could snap my fingers and conjure a porch.”

“I think you’re mixing metaphors; are you supposed to be a genie or a wizard?”

“Hi, Harry!” called a familiar voice.

Harry turned to find himself face to face with one Hermione Granger, in the flesh. She was smiling tautly, clutching a clipboard to her chest, and wearing a scarf with gold glitter in the thread. Even though he’d seen her picture, she was somehow very different than he’d envisioned her. For one thing, she couldn’t be more than a few months older than Harry. He felt a rush of respect for her that she’d risen to showrunner in her twenties. That had to be an achievement.

“Hey,” Harry said with a smile. She was surrounded by a cluster of assistant producers, some of whom Harry had already met. 

“We’re just checking in. They got some great footage of you today. It’s being reeled in production as we speak. And we go live in about two hours, so I wanted to be sure you’re camera-ready.”

“Harry only cares about impressing Tom Riddle, not the plebeian masses,” Ron said, having walked up at some point. He was peering at Hermione with open fascination. She noticed and seemed totally taken aback.

“Ron Weasley, right?” She glanced at her clipboard, like the name of a crew member would be on her first page of handwritten notes, then back up with pink cheeks.

Harry looked back and forth between them with a slowly-burgeoning realization that was sped along when Lavender caught his eye and smiled wickedly.

_ They’re fucking _ , she mouthed, and Harry choked on nothing.

“Are you okay?” Hermione asked. Ron pounded him helpfully on the back; the guy really didn’t know his own strength, Harry thought, wincing at the sensation of another breath being knocked out of him.

“I’m f-fine,” he said, stepping away from Ron just to be safe and holding up his hands to fend off further attempts at rescue. “And we’re nearly ready,” he added. He had an idea that struck him so suddenly and with such force he couldn’t doubt its perfection for a moment. “We have to build a pergola.”

A pergola in the front of the house was risky, sure, but Harry could visualize how it would amp up the house’s curb appeal in an instant, and they had just enough time to put something simple together. The twins created the basic frame while Harry and Ron worked out the details on the trim, going with an asymmetrical geometric look that tied in with the house’s square face, and Harry thought of silently as a nod to Tom Riddle’s known preoccupation with the clean lines of midcentury modern architecture. There wasn’t time to seal it but Harry spent every minute leading up to the shoot rubbing stain into it with painstaking attention to detail, sure the camera lights would somehow catch something he’d missed. Ron had to physically pull him away when it was time for the camera crew — and Tom Riddle — to have their look.

Like Hermione, Tom Riddle arrived with an entourage of producers in addition to the cameras and lights. It was like watching one of those cartoons where a storm cloud follows a single character across the scene, but inverted. The street was growing dim but it was like a perfect midday sun shone down on Tom Riddle, the host beside him an afterthought. (Though she was a pretty dark-haired woman who was vaguely familiar even to Harry which meant she had to be significantly famous.)

They wandered up to the bungalow and Harry watched Tom Riddle take in the house, riveted, even as a stylist brushed his hair, muttering under his breath, and hastily applied a little light makeup.

“Okay, they’re ready for you,” said Violet, Harry’s regular producer today, and she pushed him gently onto the sidewalk. He walked slowly the dozen steps it took to be embraced by the lights, which had now swelled to encompass most of the front of the house.

“You must be Harry Potter,” said Tom Riddle, turning to him without making eye contact or moving his hands from where they were wound behind his back. Harry had automatically begun to hold his hand out to be shaken, and now it fell back to his side. He felt frozen somehow.  _ Deer in the headlights _ , he thought, but in this case it had less to do with the intense light and more to do with Tom Riddle.

“N-nice to meet you,” Harry said, wincing at his own awkwardness. He blinked at the nearest camera, but couldn’t even make out the dark-clothed person behind it. It wouldn’t be someone he’d met anyway; this was an entirely different crew than the one that had trailed Harry all day.

“Lots to take in at this location,” said the host, like she was trying to distract from Harry’s stilted energy. “A real mixture of classic and modern. I know I’m not the only one who’s dying to know — is there a story behind that tattoo?”

Harry stared at her. The cameras were on him and the silence was stretching; he didn’t have to be familiar with the industry to know that was forbidden on live television.  _ How the fuck does she know about…? _ But of course—he’d thoughtlessly stripped to his t-shirt earlier in the shop, and it must have ridden up.

“Let the poor man retain some of his mystery,” Tom Riddle said in a low voice that sounded so much better in person than it did on television. Harry’s gaze snapped to him helplessly, but Riddle wasn’t looking at Harry; he was looking at the host with gentle retribution. She smiled in lighthearted apology.

“Anyway, I’m sure everyone wants to know what our judge thinks of the  _ mysterious _ Harry Potter’s efforts on day one.” She indicated the front door, which Harry had painted by hand to make it look like it had more carved detail than it did, using the red contrast color to create the illusion of eight panels and a dental molding.

“We all know how you feel about paint, but the bold colors honor the house’s period, don’t they?”

“Indeed,” Tom Riddle said, a little of his earlier warmth gone. Harry had the first inkling that he might not like what Tom Riddle had to say about the house, after all, watching Tom Riddle’s frown deepen as he looked at the pergola and then quickly away, almost flinching.

“And the pergola!” exclaimed the host, finally looking away from the front door to study Riddle instead. “An undeniably daring choice.” She rested one hand on the wrought-iron fence that Harry had installed at the last minute then draped with an understated natural garland. He thought it gave the perfect, classy finish to the building’s bold street face. 

Standing next to the host, tall and composed and understated-festive in a black pea coat and red scarf, Tom was perfectly expressionless. 

“Well, Tom,” prompted the host, “what do you think?”

Harry waited, trying not to hold his breath, for Tom to answer.

Tom calmly looked at a spot over Harry’s head with a scathing expression. On camera it would look like he was pinning Harry to the spot, but in reality most of the effect was lost by the total absence of eye contact. It was like he knew where Harry was standing, but Harry was so beneath his notice he was invisible.

“I think,” he said slowly, “there are good reasons I don’t watch YouTube.”

*

“It could have been worse,” Ron said soothingly, sitting in a folding chair beside Harry outside the encampment back in the village.

Harry lifted his head from his hands and looked at Ron in disbelief. “No, it actually couldn’t.”

“Sure it could,” Ron insisted, tipping back his beer then explaining with perfect confidence, “you could have  _ deserved _ his asshole comments. But you didn’t. The house looks great! And the viewers are the ones who vote.”

Harry should have been encouraged by that reminder, but instead he just felt worse. It was Tom Riddle he wanted to impress. He didn’t really care what a bunch of strangers watching the show thought; it was just like on YouTube. He couldn’t connect to the anonymous viewers. It was just the handful of regular commenters whose remarks he looked forward to.

Ron yawned so widely his jaw cracked.

“You should get some sleep,” Harry said at once. “It’ll be another long day tomorrow.”

“I could say the same for you,” Ron observer wryly. 

“Yeah, I’ll turn in in a sec.”

But after Ron went in, Harry found himself walking out of the village toward the house.

He hadn’t thought about how long it would take when he started off; the decision to go hadn’t even been conscious. In one of the dozens of white VW Jettas or Chevy pickup trucks the producers drove everywhere, it only took a few minutes. On foot it was more like a half hour, even cutting across the grounds of the school, dark and haunted looking as it was well past midnight.

The street lamps illuminated the front of the house and its porch light was on. Harry stood leaning against the decorative fence and stared until his eyes were sore. Then he walked up the walk just beyond the pergola and admired his work on the door.

“What are you smiling about?”

Harry jumped at the voice, twisting around to find that  _ Tom Riddle _ was behind him, hands in his coat pockets, appearing out of nowhere and in silence. He looked just like he had earlier except the shadows made him look colorless, carved from onyx and ivory. Harry shivered.

“I was just checking,” Harry said faintly. Riddle stood no more than ten feet away, and he slowly took one step, shortening the distance by a third. “I wanted to make sure I still liked the work, even though  _ you  _ hate it.”

Harry was surprised by his own boldness. Not that it was out of character, but he mouthing off to the average asshole was different than doing it to  _ Tom Riddle… _

“Who said I hate it?” Riddle asked idly, and took another step. Harry caught a whiff of something subtle and expensive. It made him hurry to unstick his feet and move away—further up the walk, under the pergola. 

“ _ You did _ ,” Harry reminded him incredulously. “In so many words.”

“Oh, Harry,” Riddle said so quietly Harry shivered again, though for a December night in the Midwest it was still and mild. “Don’t believe a word I say when the cameras are on.  _ That _ man is a persona.”

Riddle finally closed the distance between them, even as Harry took another fumbling backward step to evade him and wound up with his back pressed against the door.

Riddle smelled even more intoxicating up close and he was so tall, a head taller than Harry, who had never thought of himself as petite. But that’s what he felt like, chest to chest with Riddle—small. This time when he shivered the trembling didn’t stop, only intensified as Riddle carded his fingers through Harry’s hair and rested his other hand on Harry’s hip, as casually possessive as if Harry, like anything else that caught his eye, belonged to him.

“What—?” was all Harry managed to breathe before Riddle bent his head and kissed him with expert thoroughness. Harry wondered if he’d been hit by a bus during his walk and was now dreaming the vivid dreams of the comatose.

But when Riddle pressed his thigh between Harry’s and the hard, long line of his leg made firm contact with Harry’s intensely interested cock, the jolt of energy that went through his entire body made him sure this was all very real.

He gasped against Riddle’s mouth and Riddle took advantage, sucking Harry’s tongue insistently into his own mouth, a technique Harry had always abhorred but with Riddle it felt natural and suitably domineering. Then he moved onto Harry’s bottom lip, using his teeth.

Harry, basically pinned to the door til now, decided to take a more active role. But when he lifted his hand to grasp Riddle’s waist, Riddle snatched his wrist and lifted his head. Their eyes met for a brief, dizzying moment. With the light behind him, Riddle’s eyes were opaque, almost inhumanly black. Then he pulled Harry toward him and spun him around, stepping up behind him so their hips were snug together and Harry, feeling a reciprocating hardness between his ass cheeks that he was apparently responsible for, went weak kneed and had to brace himself against the door with both hands. Riddle pulled his hands together so he could hold Harry’s wrists tightly in one hand and ground into his ass.

Harry had always wanted to meet Tom Riddle, but he hadn’t expected that it would ever happen at all. Or if it did, not like this: shoved face-first against the door he’d hand-painted that afternoon. A door which was barely dry and still smelled so strongly of fumes it went straight to Harry’s head. Or maybe his dizziness was the result of having his hands pinned above his head while Tom Riddle, television star and icon, reached around Harry’s waist and dipped his hand into his jeans.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Harry managed when Riddle’s hand cupped him through his boxers.

“So hard,” Riddle murmured approvingly, straight into his ear, then nipped Harry’s ear and withdrew his hand so he could maneuver it around and shove it down the back of Harry’s jeans instead.

Around that moment, Harry remembered where they were.

“T—R—Mr. Riddle,” he stammered. The name sounded ridiculously formal given the fact Riddle’s smooth fingertip was circling his hole, but Harry couldn’t bring himself to call him anything else. “We—anyone could see.”

“Yes,” Riddle crooned in his ear. “And I can see you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” His finger pushed in dry past Harry’s rim, on the verge of painful. But he went no further, on crooked the knuckle enough to tug at the tight skin. “Some stranger walking by and seeing you here, moaning to be fucked.”

Harry did moan, though the invading finger hurt a little and the idea of someone seeing  _ mortified _ him, the pain and the mortification were—mixed into the cocktail of  _ Riddle _ , his attention and his vicious kisses, his smell and his lean, broad body pressed against Harry’s back—

Riddle pulled back his hand and Harry felt his chin on Harry’s shoulder. Then he jerked down Harry’s jeans and they dropped to his knees. 

It  _ was  _ December in  _ Ohio _ , and a public street was feet away. The rush or cold air on Harry’s body made him gasp and he was about to scream and pull away when a blunt pressure was shoved up against his hole, steady and insistent and slicked with lube.

“ _ What are you _ …”

That was as far as Harry got before Riddle leaned in hard to the thrust and punched the air out of Harry in time with his bottoming out. Harry’s experiences with bottoming had always been gradual, with tons of prep and lots of worried questions from his partners at every step. This—this was practically instant, all-consuming, and not a little bit painful. He tore his hands free from Riddle’s hold and scrambled for purchase against the door. A distant part of him worried he’d spoil the paint job in his instinctive attempts to escape.

“Oh, now,” Riddle breathed against the top of his head, locking his arm around Harry’s waist in a way that lifted Harry onto his toes, pulling slowly back and then rocking fully in once more. “Don’t be coy. Just take it like you know you want to.”

Harry felt equal parts indignant and bizarrely transparent, like Riddle had noticed something about Harry even Harry hadn’t.

“ _ God, _ ” Harry half-sobbed, his face falling onto his forearms as Riddle snapped against him a few times, shallow, so their bodies stayed pressed together but Harry felt him bottom out again and again.

Riddle’s hand crept back around to cup him by the balls and the base of his cock. His palms were huge, his fingers long and narrow. Harry had softened a bit at the shock of coldness and the brutal stretch, but he filled up again fast in the heat of Riddle’s hand, Riddle tugging on his shaft and alternately stroking his cock, teasing the tip.

“Just as I knew you’d be,” Riddle said, but instead of smug he sounded wondering. “I bet you wish the cameras were here to see me take you.”

Harry whimpered at the unnecessary reminder that  _ anyone could see _ , and thrust against Riddle’s hand as best he could speared fully on Riddle’s cock.

“You feel extraordinary,” Riddle said more softly. “I can’t wait,” he added. Harry thought dizzily that Riddle  _ hadn’t  _ waited, had he? Then he realized what Riddle meant when he leaned back, held Harry by the hips, and fucked him so hard he had no choice but to just spread his legs and grit his teeth and take it. In his ringing ears he was conscious of the  _ noises _ —the squelch of lube, the slapping of their thighs, and Riddle’s grunts—

It was that, the little involuntary sounds, the evidence of abandon in a man that had seemed earlier so aloof, so untouchable— _ that _ , and the way the angle shifted when Riddle pulled Harry back against him and leaned over him again—and Harry came.

Harry came so hard his come hit the door on the first pulse. Riddle felt him spasm and murmured approvingly, “Can’t help yourself can you? Just as I knew you’d—“ and he came too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “So maybe that’s your strategy,” Violet suggested, looking sly. “Do something you know he’ll hate, the cameras roll on him being a dick to you, and then the viewers will vote for you to put him in his place.”
> 
> Harry’s thoughts had gotten completely derailed by the phrasing “dick to you” as “cameras roll.” He’d been seized all day by daydreams that someone had walked by or the cameras were on all along. But he knew they’d acted in perfect secrecy. The set village was just the same this morning as the morning before. The assistant producers in flannel; the bad coffee; the perfunctory hellos with the other contestants at craft services. 
> 
> A highlight of being fucked by his celebrity crush was that on the long—painful—walk “home” and the sleepless night that followed, Harry hadn’t been able to obsess about the results of the preliminary round. And that morning when the votes were tallied he was firmly in the top ten and therefore advancing to the next round, which meant at least three more days in Tipton Ohio.


	5. The Living Room, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for your comments! Please remember I'm writing as I go so if you have (reasonable) requests, I'm happy to take them in the comments and incorporate them as best I can. <3 (Also please remember I'm writing as I go and the work is unedited and unbetaed after Chapter 2, which means the writing could be pretty bad and there could be errors but I hope you'll take it in the spirit intended: as a light-hearted, holiday-themed, spontaneous gift to my little corner of the fandom. <3)

Harry woke to the sound of someone pounding on his door at five a.m. He blinked, disoriented by the dim space — low ceilings, sparsely furnished — until he remembered through the haze of fitful sleep that he was in his temporary apartment in the site village. Where he’d just made over a home exterior in an afternoon. And been broadcast live on TV.

And…

Another round of pounding truncated that thought and Harry swung his legs out of bed. He hesitated a moment, not sure he’d should open his door to a stranger’s violent knocking, and then he heard a muffled but familiar voice say, “Harry, have you seen the vote?!”

He opened the door to frown at Ron. His eyes were gritty and dry from the hours he’d lain awake staring at the ceiling before finally drifting off into an unrestful sleep no more than an hour or two before. He was still wearing his clothes, which smelled faintly of Tom Riddle’s expensive cologne and faintly of Tom Riddle’s expensive lube. At that realization, he shuffled backward from Ron, feeling his cheeks burn.

But it was dark and Ron was too distracted to notice his discomfort. He was holding up his phone, the screen a bright square in the gloom of the parking lot outside in the pre-sunrise darkness, but it illuminated enough of Ron’s face to reveal his wide eyes and grin.

“You were second place! In the public vote! You beat  _ Amanda Nelson _ ,” he added, a vaguely familiar name that Harry thought belonged to a popular blogger he’d never gotten around to checking out.

“Cool,” Harry said, which was clearly not the response Ron was expecting, because his smile fell and he narrowed his eyes on Harry with sudden concern.

“‘Cool’?” he echoed incredulously. “Are you sick or something? It’s amazing! We’re on to the next round!”

Harry hid a yawn against his shoulder, letting the idea settle in. He  _ was _ happy and relieved to move on. He  _ liked _ what they did the day before, whatever Tom Riddle said. Or didn’t say. Or did. Harry remembered why he’d lain awake so late. What the  _ fuck _ was Tom Riddle’s  _ deal _ ?

“Okay, yeah, it’s amazing,” he agreed, grinning back at Ron. “Though I’m kind of offended by how obviously shocked you are.”

Ron hesitated but, reassured by the good humor in Harry, grinned again, more broadly yet, and shoved his phone in his pocket. “Well, people love Riddle. And he  _ did _ hate it. But when we watched the playback it was—I don’t know, kind of out of character? He’s not usually like that. Just—downright mean, you know?” He looked expectantly at Harry, and when Harry didn’t chime in, his eyebrows climbed up toward his hairline. “Wait. You—you watched the playback, right?”

Harry fidgeted. He definitely hadn’t. Ron laughed and tilted his head to one side with a slight squint, like Harry was a mythical creature or at the very least like no one he’d ever seen before. It should have been more embarrassing than it was, but somehow nothing Ron said or did felt like it invited any offense.

“Okay, so, you’re the only person ever who could be on broadcast television for the first time and just be like ‘eh, I’ll watch later.’ Cool. Got it. So, the highlights: you looked great. I would have gone a little heavier on the hair product if it was me, but scruffy suits you much better on camera, so I’ll yield to the stylist. He was right. You seemed confident but humble, enthusiastic, etcetera. One of the only contestants who obviously knew the cameramen by name by the way. And the house looked really good under the lights. Then Riddle seemed way too mean, and you looked like God had smote you—”

Harry winced, and Ron paused, wincing, too.

“Sorry, but you totally did.”

Harry held up his hands. “I’m sure I did,” he said with an uneasy laugh, feeling a pulse of heat in every bite mark on his neck and every bruise on his ass with a wave of fresh confusion.

“And it really worked, I guess? People liked you anyway, and the way Riddle acted made it seem like you were at risk, so they actually called in their votes. That’s half the battle, engaging the audience to the point where they’ll vote,” Ron added almost like an afterthought. “It’s only a small fraction of the viewers who are really compelled to vote you know. The statistic is something like…” He seemed to catch himself, falling abruptly silent and looking at Harry sidelong. “Anyway, not that I would really know.” He shrugged awkwardly. “Not my area.”

_ So _ , Harry thought, remembering Violet’s comment about Harry and the showrunner, Hermione,  _ they’re fucking in  _ secret.

“Now that you’ve woken me up, let’s get a headstart on the living room,” Harry suggested, stretching. “Just give me five minutes to get dressed.” He wrinkled his nose. “Um, ten. I’m going to grab a shower.”

Ron, still distracted by whatever indiscretion he thought he’d just revealed, nodded and backed out of the doorway. Harry grabbed his towel and clean clothes and went down to the showers, a separate building but already lit up. Harry realized there were probably contestants who had barely slept, but forced back the strange competitive energy that was mostly alien to him. He knew that  _ he _ wouldn’t make it through a whole month, or even a whole week, without setting the work aside for at least a few hours at night. He’d just try not to compare himself to anyone else, not even the dark-haired young woman in full tasteful makeup and careful sausage curls who opened the door just as he was reaching for the handle.

“Hi,” she said, giving him a once-over. “You’re Harry Potter.”

He put two and two together at once. “And you’re Amanda Nelson,” he said, twisting his towel between his hands. “Nice to meet you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Mhmm.” She looked over his shoulder for a moment, and in the strained silence Harry wondered if this was some kind of challenge, like he should back down the metal portable staircase rather than requiring her to move out of the way by stepping to the side of the platform. But before he could decide, she looked him straight in the eye.

“I liked what you did with the evergreens,” she said, narrowing her eyes like the compliment was a test and she was expecting a wrong answer. “Transplanting the little volunteers from along the property line instead of dipping into your total project budget for landscaping. Interesting.”

“Well, laying sod in December seems like a cheap trick, knowing it’ll never take,” Harry murmured, referencing the first suggestion that Seamus had when they were contemplating what to do with the yard. Harry then immediately worried that Amanda had lain sod and he’d just inadvertently insulted her, but she was nodding.

“Yes, but there were better trees the nursery brought over. So you must have been trying to conserve the budget. Big plans inside I bet? Some showstopper, like a gourmet kitchen or floor-to-ceiling marble in the master bath?”

Harry laughed uncomfortably. “Uh, no. I just, um. Those trees were fine? And they’re already established on the property, so we know they like the soil and the light. They’re low maintenance? I mean, some average person is going to live in these houses, probably. Will any of them know how to keep a greenhouse cypress alive for more than a year?”

Silence again. Those narrowed dark-brown eyes. Then she pursed her lips and took a step back on the platform and gestured for him to walk past her through the door. “Anyway. You were going in here. I won’t delay you.”

“Um, okay,” Harry said, inching past her with a nervous smile. “Thanks.” She smelled like something expensive too, but it was flowery instead of spicy. Still, she was bossy enough that Harry felt a flare of fascination that made him question his sexuality again, an issue he’d officially tabled again after the tenth round of internal debate. 

He took a quick, thorough shower, towel-dried his hair so he wouldn’t completely freeze in the brisk outdoors, then shrugged into his standard long-sleeved t-shirt, jeans, work boots and denim jacket, the warmer one with the lining and down fill, and jogged down to craft services where the number of contestants and crew members milling around between the coffee and the buffet tables had doubled since he’d gone into the showers. Amanda Nelson was nowhere to be seen, probably already deep into the day’s work somewhere, but he saw a few other people he was beginning to recognize, surrounded by their color-coded crews, and exchanged strained but polite greetings and polite questions about how the day had gone for them.

There were a few people missing, he realized already, but whether they were eliminated or had just been earlier or slower to get started he obviously couldn’t be sure. He got out his phone, opened a browser and started looking for some coverage of yesterday’s round that would give him more clues.

Bizarrely, he saw his own name in several of the headlines, and was so flustered he just scrolled down as fast as he could, clicking on something that seemed more nonspecific and therefore safe. It listed the bare minimum of details — the number of viewers, the number of votes — all in the hundreds of thousands, which was staggering to Harry — and then the eliminations. Two names were ones Harry recognized; one was a popular vlogger that Harry had probably subconsciously imitated a lot in his own videos. He’d been one of the reasons Harry had enough confidence to start a vlog himself. The idea that someone who had more experience, and a bigger base following by far than Harry, had already been eliminated while Harry had not, was a strange feeling.

Harry looked up from his phone enough to navigate the crowd away from craft service, and bumped into his producer waiting outside the vinyl barrier.

“Harry! Great!” Violet was smiling broadly, revealing two crooked canines. “I’m so excited about the results. Can we talk on your way to the site?”

Harry climbed into the backseat of one of the ubiquitous Jettas, driven by another producer who waved to him in the rearview but let Violet do the talking.

“So,” she said, leaning over her own skinny lap with her hands clasped together to look at him intently. “Obviously Tom didn’t receive your design the way you hoped. But then again, that’s to be expected, sort of? I mean, he’s a traditionalist. And you already had an uphill battle because he’s a traditionalist who’s bored by the Craftsman style.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, but he wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

“The viewers like you, Harry, obviously. But they’re also more inclined to vote for someone they like if they think there’s a real threat they’ll be eliminated, right?”

That’s basically what Ron had said. “Yeah.”

“Also, I privately think they like to stand up for someone who’s an underdog—someone the big bad celebrity judge is unkind to. So maybe that’s your strategy,” Violet suggested, looking sly. “Do something you  _ know _ he’ll hate, the cameras roll on him being a dick to you, and then the viewers will vote for you to put him in his place.”

Harry’s thoughts had gotten completely derailed by the phrasing “dick to you” as “cameras roll.” He’d been seized all night by vivid imaginings that someone  _ had _ walked by or the cameras  _ were  _ on all along. But he knew they’d acted in perfect secrecy. The set village was just the same this morning as the morning before. The assistant producers in flannel; the bad coffee; the perfunctory hellos with the other contestants at craft services. 

“I don’t know,” Harry said, glancing out the window to hide the expression on his face which he was sure would give too much away. “I don’t want to make this all about him.”

It was true. Harry felt a spark of excitement this morning that hadn’t been there the day before when he was zeroed in on the task at hand. The overarching possibilities struck him now. What if he could get his work out there? Help someone? Help himself? His fledgling repair business was the only thing he enjoyed about his day-to-day life. It certainly wasn’t his various day jobs flipping burgers at whatever place hadn’t driven him to quitting yet, or worrying about paying for the basic bills from month to month.

He was good at this stuff, and he’d never had any desire to imitate anyone’s design or work. He could admire and respect their output but then rethink everything the way  _ he _ would have done it and enjoy it that much more. That confidence in his own vision gave him a high he hadn’t felt in any other aspect of his life. And it was what told him, in this moment, he could do this, too. He could create rooms people would like, earn their votes, and make it—if not to the finale, at least through enough rounds that he might have more work waiting for him when he got back home than he’d had when he left. He didn’t need Tom Riddle for any of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All Harry had intended tonight was to see whether his memory was any clearer in the spot where it happened, with the same murky streetlight pouring down. It was much colder tonight, but otherwise everything looked just as it had.
> 
> Down to Tom Riddle, standing in the yard and studying one of Harry’s rescued evergreens with an inscrutable expression. 
> 
> Harry stared at him for a long second, sure he was a figment of his imagination, then finally managed, “What are you doing here?” in a slightly choked voice.
> 
> Riddle glanced up briefly, not even fully lifting his head, like he’d known where Harry was all along. “Are you sure this will transplant?” He fingered one leggy branch like he was checking for a pulse and couldn’t find it. “Trees are difficult like that.”
> 
> “It’s hardy,” Harry said, shrugging. “Worth a shot. What are you doing here?” He swallowed. Did Riddle expect—? A reprise? And if he did, would Harry allow it?
> 
> Some of his thoughts the night before had turned on whether he should have protested at some point. Should have spoken up at the very least. Should have demanded an opportunity to say “yes,” instead of just—he hated the word, but— _surrendering_.


	6. The Living Room, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's nearly midnight but not quite the fifth in my time zone, so this still counts, right? D:
> 
> dovecote, I tried to meet the request from your comment here and I'll try to work more of that kind of thing into future chapters! Thanks for a great request/recommendation, I had fun with it. <3
> 
> If anyone wants to see anything in the story please just ask, and I'll do my best. Happy holidays.

HUFFPOST ENTERTAINMENT

Harry Potter, Relative Unknown, Claims Second-Most Votes on the Premiere of CLN’s Holiday Special

by Eric Betterman, staff writer

CLN pulled out all the stops—and its checkbook—for its daring voyage into uncharted waters this December. The much anticipated Holiday Special, starring the network's big-ticket star Tom Riddle, combines reality television, audience voting, and home improvement in a unique fashion and with an irresistible holiday theme.

Viewers tuned in. Ratings soared over what the network has lately been collecting on the average Tuesday night. Fans’ expectations were understandably high, and for this first broadcast at least, CLN didn’t disappoint.

Twenty up-and-coming internet personalities make up the contestants in the Holiday Special, ranging from faces like Amanda Nelson’s, familiar even to those who can’t tell a wrench from a pair of pliers, to the earnest young YouTube vlogger Harry Potter, who has all the charm of a star but the notoriety of an ordinary guy.

If you missed last night’s episode, Potter's name may still be unfamiliar to you. And it’s possible that Potter’s affable smile and creative flare were a fluke, or enhanced by producers’ manipulations, and that he really isn’t the rising star he seemed so obviously to be on Tuesday night.

But our money’s on Potter to take a successful premiere and really launch CLN’s Special into super-popularity, and maybe even inspire a meme or two (this writer, at least, would welcome a slow-motion gif of him peeling off that sweatshirt—I’m only human).

No one can predict the future, but I will say that the Huffpost watch party for the show Thursday has tripled from a much more modest turnout on Tuesday. The excitement in our office isn't over Amanda Nelson’s sleek designs or anticipation of at least six farmhouse kitchens (what real human can pull off open shelves and who else is sick of shiplap?)—no, what intrigues us is Potter's smile and ability to make small, reasonable updates to a serviceable house outshine expensive upgrades. Nothing could be more off-brand for CLN, which has made its fortunes showcasing down-to-the-studs renovations that are more like rebuilds that no more mere mortal could ever afford.

Our opinion of Potter's talents isn't just based on his efforts last night, though the way he pulled together an exterior makeover without buying anything but a little paint still has us dazzled. Potter’s YouTube presence may involve a lot of amateur camerawork on low-grade devices and a sometimes painful, total lack of trimming or other edits, but his talent is on display in each and every one. Check them out to tide you over ‘til Thursday!

***

Harry didn’t care about Tom Riddle’s opinions or approval. Really, he didn’t. But he couldn’t help revisiting the scene of the—well, not crime, but incident—late Wednesday night.

He hadn’t expected to see anyone there. He’d planned to stand outside in the cold darkness and seek the clarity that had escaped him ever since he and Tom Riddle parted the night before. What exactly had happened there? Was it just Harry’s imagination, or had Tom Riddle seemed hungry for him? Had Tom Riddle really held him tightly for long moments after coming inside, then carefully rearranged Harry’s disrupted clothing with gentle hands?

Had he said into Harry’s hair, almost too soft to hear, _“Until next time”?_

All Harry'd planned was to see whether his memory was any clearer in the spot where it happened, with the same murky streetlight pouring down. It was much colder tonight, but otherwise everything looked just as it had.

Including the fact that Tom Riddle was there.

Harry jumped like he'd seen a ghost, but it was just Tom Riddle, his dark hair and his long dark coat melding him in to the shadows where he stood in the yard, studying one of Harry’s rescued evergreens with an inscrutable expression. 

Harry stared at him for a long second, sure he was a figment of his imagination, then finally managed, “What are you doing here?” in a slightly choked voice.

Riddle glanced up briefly, not even fully lifting his head, like he’d known where Harry was all along. “Are you sure this will transplant?” He fingered one leggy branch like he was checking for a pulse and couldn’t find it. “Trees are difficult like that.”

“It’s hardy,” Harry said, shrugging. “Worth a shot. What are you doing here?” He swallowed. Did Riddle expect—? A reprise? And if he did, would Harry allow it?

Since their encounter, his near-constant reflections always circled back to whether he should have protested at some point. He knew he should have spoken up at the very least. Should have demanded an opportunity to say “yes,” instead of just—he hated the word, but— _surrendering_.

But all the while he'd wrestled the question of what he should have done, he had been thinking of everything strictly in the past tense. That meant it had never occurred to him to deliberate what he should do if he found himself alone in the dark with Tom Riddle a second time. Harry had assumed that would never happen; he'd never given any alternative a thought.

But he’d said “Until next time.”

Harry imagined himself as the most fleeting of interests for Riddle, one he’d sated without exerting much effort at all. Riddle was rarely seen with the same person twice, and Harry hadn’t even made him work for it. He’d probably forget Harry in record time.

_But he remembered Riddle panting in his ear as his thrusts picked up speed and force:_

_“...just as I knew you’d be.”_

“I didn’t know you could look at the sites before tomorrow,” Harry said, desperate to escape his own thoughts. Speaking focused him on his surroundings instead of his circuitous thoughts, but unfortunately for his composure, Riddle wasn't just in his head. He was also standing a few feet away.

“Oh, I’m sure the producers wouldn’t appreciate it,” Riddle said absently, finally concluding his inspection of the evergreen, and angled his face toward Harry. “You walked here.”

It was a statement, not a question, so Harry just shrugged.

Riddle’s eyes narrowed. “You walked back to the set village last night.”

“Well, yeah,” Harry said, wondering why Riddle’s eyes were narrowing, why his mouth was tightening, and why Harry was looking at his mouth in the first place. 

Riddle reached into his pocket, his jaw tight, and turned and walked up toward the door to the house. “I’ll arrange a ride for you while you go over the living room with me.”

“Go over?” Harry said, forgetting his awkwardness in favor of indignation. “Why?”

“So that I can give my advice. Feedback. You know.” He opened the door and stepped through. The lights were already on.

Confused but incensed, Harry followed, pausing to look out at the street as he pulled the door closed. The quick glance over his shoulder revealed the street was empty. But now he knew that the streets around the project site had all been closed down three days before the start of production, so the lack of traffic shouldn’t surprise him.

Riddle had already wandered through the foyer and was making his way to the living room, which he’d obviously visited before Harry arrived, based on how he immediately launched into his opinion of the best way to showcase the built-ins on either side of the fire, what remained of the original tiled hearth, and speculated as to the authenticity of what appeared to be a period ceiling light fixture.

Harry was too flustered to think of any word to say except “No!” which he did say, loudly. Riddle looked over at him with a faint smile and a raised brow.

“What's that?”

“I don’t want or need your help. And even if I did, it’s cheating!”

Riddle paused at that, his small smile replaced with a frown. Harry didn’t know what he expected to hear, but he was shocked when Riddle just shrugged and said, “So?”

Harry folded his arms tightly over his chest, upset. “I don’t want you to help me. It isn’t…” he shook his head and then, frustrated into brutal honesty, added, “I think it’s cheating whether you do or not, and also, I don’t like your ideas.”

He’d hoped to anger Riddle. He was in the mood for a fight and he couldn’t help picking one. He also couldn’t help the several reprehensible fantasies that flashed one by one in his mind. Riddle, furious, pinning him down to show him a lesson. Riddle using him slowly and cooing in his ear til he forfeited almost as though it was his own idea…

Anyway, Riddle didn’t look angry. He just looked thoughtful and vaguely amused, which was somehow worse. It was humiliating, and what was wrong with Harry’s wiring that somehow humiliating equated to hot?

Harry slammed the door on his subconscious. “I’m going to go get some sleep,” he announced, then felt an immediate wave of regret. If he hadn’t said something so definitive, he could have left the door open for Riddle to try talking him into something else. 

But Riddle just nodded coolly. “That would be for the best. There should be a car waiting outside.”

Harry felt oddly off-balance, like he was being sent away in the midst of something that he’d rather stay and complete, whatever that meant.

Riddle’s gaze was fastened on Harry’s face. “Oh, you thought I’d fuck you in here, didn’t you?”

While Harry tried to find the words to formulate a response to that remark, Riddle looked pensively around the room. It was presently furnished in nothing but dust and two old dining chairs with the cushion springs showing.

“Not tonight, but tomorrow. If I like what you do in here, that is.” He winked solemnly at Harry and then nodded toward the door. “Go on. Car’s waiting.”

Harry should have been offended. He should have said something that was both cutting and witty. Instead he nodded and retraced his steps through the house with one predominant question on his mind, unanswered. _Does that mean he liked the front elevation after all?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Harry, really, you’re just supposed to stand around looking marketable,” Ron complained from the foot of the ladder. “Not actually _do_ things. Being truly useful is _my_ job, not yours.”
> 
> Harry, standing on the tips of his toes on the second-to-highest rung, strained his arm another half-inch and finally grasped the wire that kept slipping from between his fingertips. 
> 
> “I’ve got it,” he declared when the wires were all severed, and plucked the fixture from its original installation, holding it against his chest with one hand as he came down the ladder. He took it up to the same room where he’d piled his tools. Ron followed and immediately began poking at it when Harry set it down.
> 
> “What’s wrong with this light?” Ron asked, frowning at it and twisting each bulb to and fro. “Looks good to me.”
> 
> “Yeah, but Riddle likes it,” Harry said, grimacing. “So it’s definitely not going back in the room.”


	7. The Living Room, Part Three

“Harry, really, you’re just supposed to stand around looking marketable,” Ron complained from the foot of the ladder. “Not actually _do_ things. Being truly useful is _my_ job, not yours.”

Harry, standing on the tips of his toes on the second-to-highest rung, strained his arm another half-inch and finally grasped the wire that kept slipping from between his fingertips.

“I’ve got it,” he declared when the wires were all severed, and plucked the fixture from its original installation, holding it against his chest with one hand as he came down the ladder. He took it up to the same room where he’d piled his tools. Ron followed and immediately began poking at it when Harry set it down.

“What’s wrong with this light?” Ron asked, frowning at it and twisting each bulb to and fro. “Looks good to me.”

“Yeah, but Riddle likes it,” Harry said, grimacing. “So it’s definitely not going back in the room.”

“Okay,” Ron said, nodding. “Going with Lavender’s strategy, then.”

Harry looked over, surprised. “What?”

But Lavender came in to speak for herself, balancing a paint tray on one hip and the water-based sealant Harry had asked for on the other. “Trying to make Riddle hate you, for pity votes.”

It was just an impolite rephrasing of what Violet had said the day before, but still, Harry couldn’t help taking _some_ offense. “I don’t think they were pity votes,” he muttered. “Well, not all of them, anyway.”

“No,” Lavender agreed. “When I voted, at least, it was out of self-preservation, not pity.”

“Thanks, Lav,” Harry said, laughing, and took the gallon of sealant from her, looking approvingly at the label. “Yeah, that’s the stuff.”

Ron looked down at his feet, his hands on his hips, like Harry had asked them to stand on their heads.

“You’re sure?” he asked for the twentieth time. The floors were lovely — in places — with a muted gleam. But in rooms throughout the house, including this one — the living room — they had been carpeted over and were marred by residual adhesive, tack strips and in a few distinctly semicircular stained places, pet urine.

With a thorough and extensive sanding and refinish, they would look like new. But Harry didn’t have time for that, and putting a product over original floors felt even worse than what he was about to do — the ultimate restoration faux pas — _painting them_.

“I think the people may turn on you over this,” said Ron’s brother Fred, appearing with a miniature rotary sander slung over his shoulder and his constant smirk. Behind him, George nodded with a toothier grin. 

“No one paints wood on CLN.”

“That’s not true,” Harry said. “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks Amanda Nelson painted the trim mauve or something.”

Ron snorted and rolled his eyes. “No, Harry. She’s a strategist. She might be into that edgy stuff on her blog but on the show? No, she’s going to play to Tom Riddle and keep things classic. And she has his dream house with that midcentury modern ranch.” He looked sincerely unhappy about it. “The game is rigged. Not that anyone is surprised by that.”

Harry tried not to catch Ron’s melancholy. They had a long day ahead. Yesterday they’d repaired the pockmarked plaster walls and repainted everything in a deep ivory and Harry had cleaned a decade of grime from the oak built-ins until they shone. Their leaded-glass door panes were also freshly scrubbed and glittered in the light of the custom miniature chandelier Harry had installed where Riddle’s favored light fixture had been. He gave it a fond, smug glance then clapped his hands together.

“Okay, I think you guys have things under control here. I’ve got to go pick out furniture for staging, but let me know if you need anything from me?”

Lavender gave a mock salute, already spreading out some plastic for the paint trays. Dean and Seamus were coming in with brushes and rollers.

“Before furniture, Harry, they’re going to interview you outside for the compilation later,” said Violet, having appeared in the hallway with her omnipresent clipboard and a cheery little wave. She was so thin she was birdlike, her braided pigtails straw-yellow. She kept stealing glances at Lavender, who eventually gave her a deliberate look and a long wink.

Ron smirked and mouthed, _They’re fucking_.

Harry couldn’t stop himself before a small laugh escaped him, and Violet looked over at once, startled, with a tentative smile. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” Harry said, picking up the leather bag Violet had given him to carry his things around after taking one look at his grubby backpack on the day he arrived.

Outside the crew had set up a director’s chair and lighting in the yard, so the house would be in soft focus in the background. Harry held still while his stylist, Sasha, plucked a leaf from his hair and hurriedly added a little more citrus-scented product.

“You’re a mess,” Sasha reminded Harry for the third time that day, but sounded fond. His voice was surprisingly soft for someone half again Harry’s size but Harry found the dichotomy charming the more he got to know him.

“Hi, Harry,” said one of the cameramen—Greg, with the cute gap between his front teeth. Harry waved back as he hopped up into the chair. A producer he hadn’t worked with a lot named Ariel smiled quickly at Harry without hardly looking up from her notes, standing outside of the shot.

“Remember, Harry, my questions don’t belong in the sound bite. So wherever possible I’m going to prompt you for answers that will stand alone, okay? It should just sound like you talking about yourself and your project.”

Harry nodded. He’d finally watched the playback from Tuesday and had a better idea of how they patched together the short little interview clips with film from in and around the site to consolidate a sense of the vision and process for each designer. 

“Ready,” said Greg, and Ariel launched into her questions.

“So, we have to ask—painting hardwood floors? Is that a cardinal sin?”

Harry laughed at her phrasing, trying not to let the camera make him uneasy. It helped him that Greg leaned out from behind the viewfinder to grin.

“I know that when you mention painting wood floors, people can be horrified, especially in a house like this that has so much of its original character. And I would hate to see someone just slap down paint on great floors like the ones in this house,” Harry admitted. “But right now the crew is carefully preparing the floor with sanding and protective sealant, so that when we prime and paint, the floor will have a protective barrier and the paint won’t penetrate the wood. Some day, a future owner who has the resources to hire an expert could have these floors restored with no issues. Refinishing removes the uppermost layer of the wood and any of the finish laying on top.”

“Why not just put down something new? CLN has given each designer a budget of $50,000 to spend on finishes.”

Harry thought that over. He still wasn’t sure what he was saving that fifty thousand for, but there was an honest answer he could give here. “It just isn’t necessary. The right move here is restoring the floor, but we don’t have enough time to do everything that would take—patch, sand, refinish, seal. Putting down more product feels like a huge waste, both of the awesome potential in the existing floor and also the new product that would go over it. Plus, painting a floor like this is something anyone can do. I know people who save up for years for new flooring and maybe they could like the floors they have in the meantime—or forever—if they just brightened them up or toned them down with paint.”

Ariel was looking at him now, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “On one of the videos on your vlog, you painted some linoleum in a friend’s kitchen.”

“Yeah, I did,” Harry said, and at Ariel’s _go on_ gesture he remembered they wouldn’t incorporate Ariel’s questions into what they prepared for the air, and rephrased. “Once I painted my friend’s kitchen floor to surprise her. It was regular sheet linoleum but in a really ugly pattern. It’s a high-traffic area and it’s held up great. I used a stencil and some shading to give it the look of stone tile, but you don’t have to be artistic at all. You can just copy a design you find on the internet using a stencil and flat colors.”

“Would you say you’ve catered to clients in the past who needed to do something affordably?”

Harry grinned ruefully and lifted his hand, almost running it through his hair before he remembered how mad Sasha would be and rubbed the back of his neck instead. “I really wouldn’t call most of the people that I’ve helped ‘clients,’ because most of the creative work I’ve done has been for friends or friends of friends, and I’ve always felt like if they let me use their floor or cabinets or walls to practice on, they don’t really owe me anything for it. But yeah, I like to go into the homes of people who’ve kind of given up on loving where they live, because, I don’t know, they can’t afford the stuff you see on TV.” He realized who he was talking to, the CTV logo seeming to glare at him from the top of Greg’s camera, and cleared his throat. “Not that I don’t really enjoy seeing an amazing luxury home renovation. We can all appreciate that. But there’s a lot of things ordinary people can do in their homes, too, without taking out a second mortgage, you know?”

When Harry got in the Jetta with Violet, he didn’t get a chance to ask her how she thought he’d done before she launched into excited chatter, beaming.

“Harry, that was great!”

He relaxed against the seat. “Really? It felt kind of, rambling?”

She gestured dismissively. “They’ll edit out all the stops and starts, don’t worry. The essence of it was great. The audience is going to love it. You definitely provide a unique perspective in the contestant pool. You’re really building a brand here, between the landscaping in preliminaries and the floors in this first round.”

Harry nodded, but he hadn’t really been thinking of a “brand,” he’d just been trying to do the best he could in the allotted time, which honestly left very little time for strategic thinking and made him work mostly off instinct.

“Thanks,” he said belatedly. Violet hadn’t noticed his hesitation, going on about how to be sure that he kept his message in the back of his mind at all times so that he would be ready when someone offered him an opportunity to connect to it. The idea of trying to stay three steps ahead of every conversation he had on camera made Harry’s head hurt, but he tried to listen and nod and take her advice seriously. She certainly knew better than he did what she was doing, and she really seemed like she was on Harry’s side.

He checked his phone, noticed the number of unread emails, and felt slightly ill.

“Do you need some what?” Violet asked, seeing his face and looking alarmed. Harry tried to ease his expression.

“No, it’s just...I’ve got like a thousand notifications from my YouTube channel.”

“Oh my gosh! Well, of course you do.” She picked up her phone. “You were trending on Twitter earlier for almost an hour.”

Harry looked down at the home screen on his phone, oddly terrified.

“Do you think the stuff they’re saying is good or bad?”

Violet’s brows rose. “You mean you haven’t looked?” 

Harry shrugged one shoulder. “Not really.” 

Violet smiled and shrugged back. “Well, I’m sure some of it isn’t nice, because at least five percent of every comment thread has to be full of barely-relevant, toxic shouting, but based on what I’ve heard I’d say _most_ of what they’re saying is really good. You should take a look, maybe?”

Harry fiddled with his phone another moment then dropped it on the seat. “Maybe later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry’s phone buzzed and he picked it up, annoyed, because hadn’t he just double-checked that his notifications were all turned off?
> 
> But then he saw a text message, not an app notification, on the screen. From an unknown  
> number.
> 
> There was no text, only a photo. The buffer symbol spun for just a few moments, then it flashed into vivid full-color.
> 
> It was a little blurry, with a dark shape in the foreground that must have been the twigs or branches of whatever cover the person had been concealed in. But it was still unmistakably a picture of Harry, shoved up against the door of the project site with his jeans around his legs.
> 
> A second message appeared below the first. Text this time. 
> 
> **Unknown number: This one is my favorite, but it’s not the only one I have. Gather $50,000 or I’ll leak it to the press. Instructions on delivery to follow.**


	8. Interlude

Hermione woke up in Ron’s trailer, her hair a bed of tangles, perfectly warm under his arm, and for the first time in as long as she could remember she had no urge to jump out of bed and into the day’s work.

The thought made her panic and roll away from Ron’s lanky, warm body and almost fall out of bed before she managed to scramble into a stable, half-sitting position. Her ridiculous thrashing around had woken Ron. He shot up onto his elbows and looked at her with sleepy-eyed surprise.

“Hermione? Everything s’ok?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. It was true. Her moment of disoriented contentedness was safely past, and she was once again thinking about the show, her checklist of things to do before eight a.m. razor-sharp in her mind’s eye.

But first.

She wrapped the sheet around her chest, tucked it under her arms and looked thoughtfully at Ron.

“Harry Potter might have something.”

Ron, still not fully awake, rubbed his hand over his jaw to poorly conceal a swallowed yawn. “Yeah? Yeah, I like him. I think he’s a good guy.”

“I’m sure he is,” Hermione said, half-impatiently. “But what I  _ mean _ is that he has some star quality. A lot of potential. This could be the beginning of something for him. And he seems to really like you.”

Ron frowned, finally seeming to follow where she was leading. “I’ve told you though, I’m not ready to represent anyone. I’ve still got a lot to learn and if I just—”

“No, no,” Hermione said quickly, putting a hand on his knee. “I don’t mean that you should rush yourself. You’d be a great agent,” she added, squeezing his leg for emphasis, “but only when you’re ready to take that step.”

Ron visibly relaxed, his relieved smile so warm it made Hermione want to crawl back under the covers and—

_ No. Show. Checklist. Okay, yes, everything back in order. Where were we? _

“He barely has a social media presence. He’s going to lose momentum if people don’t have something to consume between episodes, and his blog was pretty...meager. Most people have seen the five or six videos he has posted a couple times, if they’ve decided to be a fan. But new fans need near-constant content to become  _ real _ fans.”

Ron nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe you could help him.”

Suddenly Ron looked wary. “Is this about the show, or Harry, or me, or you?”

Hermione was only slightly hurt, in part because he wasn’t wrong to be suspicious. But she didn’t have to hesitate before saying, firmly, “All of the above.”

Ron sighed and got out of bed, shamelessly naked and oblivious to the effect it had on her to watch him walk across the room, nude and stretching. She rearranged the sheet carefully over her own body and refocused. Again.

“You can’t tell him it was my idea, obviously, but you don’t have to pretend like it isn’t about the show, if you don’t want to. You can tell him a producer said something.”

“Won’t they?” Ron looked over his shoulder from where he was rummaging through a half-open dresser drawer. “The assistant producers? Isn’t this their job?”

Hermione sighed. “No. They’re busy enough just making sure things stay somewhat on track. Trying to promote the personality they’re handling isn’t going to come into play until the later rounds. I don’t necessarily think Harry will make it that far,” she added gently, “but that doesn’t mean this couldn’t turn into something good for him. And if you’re a part of that good thing, then maybe he’ll remember you when the time comes, right?”

Ron pulled a long-sleeved t-shirt over the taut line of his shoulders, a tension he carried in his voice too when he said, “I don’t like the idea of doing something like that just because it could benefit me.”

Hermione hated it when he said things like this. It made her feel incidentally judged. “It’s just the business,” she said, more shortly than she meant to, and forced herself to be calmer as she explained. “You have to connect with people and build trust for them to want to work with you. So if you’re going to see that as somehow misusing friendships, then—”

_ Maybe you’re not going to make it in this industry. _

She didn’t know how to rephrase that thought in any way that wasn’t offensive, so she just worried her lip, hoping she hadn’t already said too much. But to her relief, when Ron turned he didn’t look angry, only thoughtful.

“Well, yeah, I guess that does make sense. Sorry.” He looked at her carefully. “And I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. You know that, right? You always make it seem...fine. The way you do it. You’re always honest. I just don’t know if I can be like that too.”

Hermione had no idea what to say. Her checklist abandoned her completely for a full three seconds. Then it snapped back into place and she broke eye contact, busying herself with the task of getting out of bed while keeping the sheet wound fully around her body. 

She didn’t have to look up at Ron to know he was watching her in amusement. “You know,” he began, “I’ve seen—”

“Don’t,” she snapped, and he wisely fell silent.

“Okay. I’ll just, um, go, then? And you can slip out after a while.”

“I’ll go in a few minutes,” she said, “it’ll be light soon.”

They looked at each other. They were in a strange place where, when they parted, neither one of them seemed to know whether it was appropriate to kiss the other goodbye. To say the traditional things couples said to one another when they were going their separate ways in the morning. Eventually Ron just smiled and slipped out the door.

Hermione didn’t let herself sink back into the blankets that smelled like the two of them. She dropped the sheet and pulled on her clothes: the exercise gear she’d worn for her short run last night before she rerouted to Ron’s trailer in the site village. It was reckless, coming here, yet she couldn’t seem to stop.

Before she moved onto the first task on the official list, Hermione spared a final thought for Harry Potter. She’d told Ron he probably wouldn’t make it past the next round or two, and she meant it. He was too green; he’d make some crucial mistake, panic under the lights of live TV, or crumble under the pressure of the time crunch.

But he might not. And if he could keep his shit together, Hermione thought he would probably be a force to reckon with for even the most seasoned of the other competitors. 

And surely, that rumor that he was going to paint a wood floor today was only a rumor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Ron helped him revive his old, forgotten Instagram account from high school, Harry’s phone immediately blew up with dozens of notifications from earlier in the day. Harry was so surprised by the buzz of haptic feedback he almost dropped his phone.
> 
> Ron snatched it out of his hands and swiped a few times to adjust the settings before handing it back. “There you go. I’ve silenced all notifications.”
> 
> Harry, relieved, accepted the phone but still looked at the now-unmoving screen with trepidation. “Thanks.” The photo on his home screen was the same one Ron had just helped him add to his Instagram profile. It was one of the stills the PR department had amassed, and in it Harry had both hands in his hair, undoing all Sasha’s hard work, and an enormous smile. He remembered the moment: they’d been scoping out the kitchen and when they pulled up the linoleum in the closet, they’d found the original intact hexagon tile.
> 
> “Are you sure about this?” he murmured to Ron. In the photo his t-shirt had ridden up and you could see a hint of the tattoo on his hip, above the visible seam of his plain blue boxers. A part of him thought it was ridiculous, and another part of him was shyly proud. It was mostly the combined effects of Sasha's efforts, designer jeans, a great camera and good timing, but still. He looked good.
> 
> “Yep,” Ron said, popping the ‘p’. “It’s a hot photo.”
> 
> Harry shot him a quick look, and Ron blinked innocently. “Sorry, do you feel objectified?”
> 
> Harry rolled his eyes and groped around for something to throw at him.


	9. The Kitchen, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you hadn't noticed, I missed yesterday. But that means two updates today! <3
> 
> Thanks for reading and if you care to let me know what you think I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

They didn’t break ground on the kitchen that day, even though it was their next project. Harry worried they were too relaxed — Tuesday would come around much more quickly than they expected it to. Still he couldn’t deny it felt luxurious, after working in forty-eight hour increments, to have an entire four days.

The thought of  _ four days  _ as an excess of time for a kitchen reno made Harry laugh. Then he winced when he stretched his arms above his head and strained the crick in his neck he’d woken up with and hadn’t shaken all day.

“That’s it, we’re done,” Fred said from the other end of the rough table they’d made from an old door balanced between two sawhorses. He straightened up and looked sharply at his twin, who had been retracing Harry’s sketch of the upper cabinets contemplatively with his forefinger.

“Why?” George blinked. “Oh, is it because Harry’s f—“ He glanced over at the camera, left unmanned while the cameraman went for a cigarette, but definitely still running. “Er, slap happy?”

“I’m not,” Harry said, stretching again, more slowly and carefully, biting his lip against a wince. “I just slept funny.” He rubbed his stiff neck.

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” snickered George, looking deliberately at the place Harry’s t-shirt didn’t hide, where a small hickey was emerging on Harry’s collarbone from beneath Sasha’s dusting of concealer.

Harry slapped a hand over it and glared. The twins backed off, but still grinned wickedly. Harry didn’t want to know how much worse this would be if it weren’t for the rolling camera.

“You guys should get going though,” Harry said, glancing at his phone which read eleven p.m. He’d sent everyone else off two hours ago, but the twins had hung around. It had surprised him for a moment, but he’d quickly given up trying to predict the twins or analyze their behavior. He didn’t have the spare energy.

“We’re not getting anywhere any more,” Fred agreed, gesturing to George again. George sighed and got to his feet, taking a parting glance at the sketch. “I still say go bold. Red cabinets with gold hardware.”

Harry laughed. “No.”

George looked wounded.

“If it was your house—or hell, even mine, then sure. Red and gold it would be. But we don’t know who’s going to live here so it’ll be a white kitchen. Sorry, George.”

“I’m Fred,” George said grumpily. 

Harry shook his head with an incredulous look. “Does that really work on other people?”

“Yes,” Fred said, giving his brother a light shove toward the door. “You’re remarkably observant, Harry, except when you’re not.” With those cryptic parting words and a quick wink from George, they were gone.

The kitchen was open to the dining room, which was basically a dumping ground at the moment for tools, supplies, rolls of plastic and empty coffee cups and water bottles. Beyond, the glass-paned French doors stood open to the living room. Harry looked past all the disastrous construction from the unfinished space to the finished one and smiled almost involuntarily at the room, complete with a narrow, exaggeratedly tall pre-lit tree. The floors were a flat charcoal with just a hint of sheen from the wax they’d applied after the paint dried. Two simple petite sofas faced one another across a primitive bench repurposed as a coffee table. Harry had found it in the basement, moldering, but it was the perfect rustic balance between the leather-upholstered furniture, the fine wood trim, and the muted floor. 

“Oh, it’s just you,” said the cameraman—Mo, this one was called—returning from his break. 

“Not for much longer.”

Mo nodded. “I’ll take off too then.”

It embarrassed Harry to realize that when he lingered at the project site, it wasn’t just his construction crew whose time he demanded, but also all the production crew too. Even Violet had been hanging around, evidenced by the fact she poked her head in a few minutes later while Mo was just zipping up the last of his equipment cases and heading out.

“So, how are you feeling?” she asked Harry, leaning against the formica counter. “Got a vision in here?”

Harry nodded slowly, glancing pointedly at the sketch. She came closer so that she could look at it. Her hair was loose today, matte gold like butter, and unnaturally straight. She tucked an errant strand behind her ear as she leaned in toward the sketch. Then she pulled back, nodding to herself.

“Looks great. Can I give you a ride back to the village?”

Harry hesitated, just as he had the night before when the group had dispersed. Yesterday, he’d begged off and stayed behind, lingering in the house until close to midnight. But Riddle didn’t show up.

Not that Harry had necessarily expected him to. But he hadn’t expected him the other times either, and still Riddle had come. And he’d told Harry that he would come by if he liked what Harry did in the space…

Of course, on camera Riddle had said something scathing about disrespecting hard wood with paint, then he’d nudged the bench with gingerly with the toe of his freshly-polished boot.

_ “This looks like something that could give you a splinter.” _

It hadn’t been what Harry wanted to hear, of course, but he’d told himself Riddle was just, how had he put it, in his  _ persona _ . What he really thought and what he said on camera weren’t necessarily the same. 

Something like physical pain had passed over Riddle’s face as he focused at last on the light fixture, which was a series of rust-colored, circular bits of medal Harry had welded together to give a sense of synergy and motion, framing a plain reproduction Edison bulb.

_ That _ Harry had enjoyed. Bothering Riddle on purpose by switching out the fixture he’d complimented was one thing. Him not liking the room overall felt like a failure.

“Harry? We’re here,” Violet said gently. 

Harry snapped out of it. “Ah, thanks,” he said hastily, reaching for the door handle. 

In his trailer Harry brushed his teeth, stripped to his boxers and flopped on the bed. At this point the darkened ceiling was a very familiar sight, and he worried a moment he might be about to spend another night memorizing it. But he body was finally tired enough to overpower his racing thoughts, it seemed.

***

The next day, Harry didn’t have time to do anything except keep the several simultaneous projects in the kitchen from clashing into chaos. Dean and Seamus were prying up the linoleum floor in the lower-traffic areas. Fred and George were disassembling the cabinets and taking them outside for paint. Ron was repairing the drywall and Lavender was preparing to tile the backsplash, where there had previously been just wallpaper, which had gone grease-stained over the years and warped by water damage.

It was hard for Harry to focus on coordinating while Violet was constantly interjecting to stage a shot. It was  _ Harry  _ who mixed the thinset for the tile instead of a perfectly-capable Lavender, and  _ Harry _ who borrowed Ron’s spackle and ladder to reach for a particularly high patch on the wall. None of the crew seemed to mind; everyone but Harry was familiar with the artifice of inserting Harry into tasks so the cameras could roll. Ron did snicker when Violet unsubtly nudged the cameraman — Greg today — behind Harry so that the shot had to have barely caught the work, or anything really except Harry’s backside.

By the end of the day the kitchen looked like a war zone, cabinets down and plastic taped everywhere, but with an immaculate, classic subway tile backsplash.

Harry didn’t let himself linger waiting for Tom Riddle. He had too much self-respect. He accepted Ron’s invitation to grab a burger instead, surprised when that didn’t mean the local McDonald’s but instead, a camp grill, a cooler, and two folding chairs set up behind the encampment with a view of the high school stadium.

“So,” Ron said after arranging two patties on the grill and plopping down in the chair next to Harry’s. “I noticed you don’t know much about all this. The business. Television, stardom, etcetera.”

“Very astute,” Harry said, leaning on his knees. “You must have been standing there where Sasha had to tell me what an eyebrow pencil was.”

Ron grinned. “That was a good hint, yeah.”

“Or when I thought I’d be wearing my own clothes.”

“No, that wasn’t it. Other people are allowed to wear their own clothes. Yours are particularly bad.”

Harry shoved his arm, Ron shoved him back, and their laughter waned into a comfortable silence.

“Yeah, so, I thought I’d offer to help you with something specific. Marketing, basic PR. Social media to start?”

Harry looked at him, puzzled, and said the first thing that came to his mind. “Why?”

Ron looked briefly uncomfortable, but his expression smoothed into resolved as he met Harry’s eye. “Because I think you could breakout as an actor. And maybe I could breakout as a manager.”

Harry’s brows rose. “You want to be my _ manager _ ?”

Ron looked uncomfortable. “Hey, I’m not just a handyman. I went to school for broadcast production and I worked on sets all along. It’s just—hard to get a shot. Or I guess hard to know when to even try to take a shot.”

Harry, hearing his defensiveness, rushed to clarify. “No, I’m sure you’re very qualified! Um, that’s not what I meant. I meant—you want to be  _ my  _ manager?”

Ron’s face went from chagrined to amused. “Oh, right. You’re the most confident insecure person I’ve ever known. I have to lead with  _ compliments _ .”

Harry rolled his eyes. “No, please don’t.”

"Okay," Ron said with a quick smile, as he shuffled to his knees by the camp grill to poke their burgers. "But I think you could be really great, Harry. And I know I can help you.

“That would be amazing, if you’d help me, but I don’t really have a lot of extra…anything. To pay you with.”

Ron looked scandalized. “I don’t want you to pay me. I don’t—I don’t mean that I should be your manager now or anything. I just want to help you as a friend, honestly. But I didn’t want—it would be weird later to bring up the other, and I didn’t want it to seem like—“

Harry smiled warmly. “I see what you’re saying.” Ron didn’t want Harry to wonder about his motivations later. “You’re hired. I keep hearing about all this stuff on Instagram and I tried to set up an account, but got an error message that I already had one with my email address.” He grimaced.

Ron laughed. “Oh, yeah. That explains why your last post on Insta was from when you were on what, junior high?”

Harry laughed uncomfortably and Ron got back in his chair and held out his hand. “Okay. This will be an after-breakfast project, tomorrow. I have a few ideas.”

Harry smiled, feeling suddenly warm and uncertain. “Thanks, Ron,” he said, the sincerity of the sentiment making his voice sound stilted.

Ron had been placing halved buns on two paper plates, preparing to set a patty inside each one. Catching the shift in tone, he looked up and replied in the same way. “Yeah, you’re welcome, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up: 
> 
> After Harry ate his burger and drank a beer with Ron, he decided to walk out to the project site. Just in case.


	10. The Kitchen, Part Two

Later, after he’d eaten a surprisingly delicious burger and half a bag of carrot sticks from Ron’s impromptu cafe, Harry went back to the project. Just in case.

He searched the shadows between the trees carefully as he walked up, alert for signs of Tom Riddle. Nothing. Then he felt a sour taste in his mouth for looking in the first place. He put the palm of his hand briefly against the center of the front door before he turned the handle and pushed it open.

There were a few fans running inside that they’d left on to help clear dust. Similarly, several windows were open, admitting gusts of cold December breeze. Harry wound through the now-familiar paths between the rooms, where they’d laid strips of plastic, cardboard and other bits of castoff material to protect the floor from heavy work boots and moisture.

Tom Riddle was sitting in the living room, legs crossed, reading.

He’d chosen the more substantial of the two sofas, a beautifully-made piece that made the room look larger with its deceptively low back, but its seat was so wide that Harry had thought it impractical when he chose it. Most people couldn’t keep their feet on the floor and lean back against the support at the same time.

But it seemed perfectly proportioned to Riddle, whose long thighs easily spanned the depth of the leather-upholstered cushion, his elbow balanced elegantly on the arm rest. As he glanced up at Harry, the lamplight caught the delicate frame of his reading glasses just as he reached up to remove them.

Harry didn’t know when he’d decided reading glasses were sexy. Possibly two seconds ago.

“Is the fireplace functioning?” Riddle asked by way of greeting, remaining unmoving on the sofa as though he owned the living room and Harry was an unexpected but dubiously welcome guest.

“Yes,” Harry said, absently tracing the line of Riddle’s arms when he stretched them slowly in front of himself one by one.

“Then lay a fire,” Riddle said, putting his glasses back on and turning the page.

He was wearing a caramel-colored sweater, cable-knit but fine, no suggestion of bulk. A black buffalo check collared shirt was visible at his throat and his sleeves, carefully folded back so his wrists were visible, fine dark hair, long bones and a Rolex. His long legs were encased in fitted grey slacks and his socks matched his shirt, but they were sheer, the print a suggestion.

Harry thought about objecting. It was the way Riddle said it, like he was giving instruction to a servant of whom he was fond. It should have been outrageous, but instead it triggered an obedient impulse in Harry that he’d never experienced before in his life. 

So even as he blinked in confused surprise, he was walking to the cauldron-sized metal firewood receptacle next to the hearth to select a few medium-sized logs, trying not to think too hard about the way he was tingling all over, how his tongue felt full and heavy and his thoughts stretched and swayed the way they did when he was drunk.

He built the fire with trembling hands, laying the logs over the grate and lighting the handful of kindling with a match, conscious of Riddle sitting behind him, certain that while he wasn’t looking at Harry, Harry had all his attention.

When the flames grew tall and hot enough to alight the bark on the logs, Harry sat back on his heels to pull the screen closed. Then he looked over his shoulder.

Riddle looked up from his book, another brief glance.

“That’s very nice,” he said lowly. “Thank you, Harry.”

Harry rose slowly to his feet. “So. I didn’t think you’d be back.” He hated that he said it at all, but he couldn't help himself. Still, why did he have to sound so _petulant_? He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at Riddle, nibbling on the inside of his lower lip.

“I have many demands on my time,” Riddle said, finally setting the book on the side table. He uncrossed his legs and let them fall open. He looked around the room thoughtfully and patted his thigh without looking at Harry. “Come here.”

Harry’s pulse jumped but he didn’t move.

“You know, the room came together better than I thought at first. If it were more tastefully staged, perhaps. Painted floors, Harry, really? But then I hardly noticed them on my little tour. I was so preoccupied with thoughts of how to have you. Bent over the sofa? On your hands and knees in front of this lovely fireplace?”

Harry swallowed hard.

Riddle looked at him at last. “Then I decided you don’t really deserve to be fucked. You painted the floors and replaced that lovely light fixture with chunks of scrap metal. It’s almost like you were testing me, Harry.” His voice lowered and all traces of good humor left his expression. “I said,  _ come here _ .”

Harry still didn’t move. He wet his lower lip. “Is this how you treat all the contestants?” He meant to be sarcastic, but instead he just sounded like a jealous boyfriend. And indeed, the unbidden image of Riddle between Amanda Nelson’s legs made jealousy, ridiculous and unwelcome, flare in his chest.

Riddle’s look softened briefly. “Oh, Harry. You’re the only one I’m interested in. But you’re trying my patience,” he added, clipped, and spread his legs meaningfully. His eyes traced Harry like he could see the tension that Harry felt, livewire-hot, in every part of his body. “It might help you,” he said, his voice quiet but also, somehow, harder, “to crawl.”

Shame struck Harry right in his indignant heart, hot and irresistible: the vision of himself  _ crawling _ to Riddle and kneeling between his polished oxfords. He swallowed again impulsively, realizing in a vague way that he was  _ salivating _ for it, even as he was only half-hard in his jeans. The desire to crawl felt unrelated to sex, somehow, yet no less primal, no less vibrant. He slowly got to his knees, his eyes prickling with tears, in response to this nameless emotion—that had clawed past his defiance, his self-respect, everything by which he defined himself—he was helpless to resist.

“There you are,” Riddle said, watching him sharply, with renewed interest, as though Harry had been out of focus and now Riddle saw him clearly for the first time. He spread his legs wider, stretching the fabric taut over the bulge between his thighs. But as Harry crawled nearer, the smooth painted wood beneath his palms giving way to the tight woven wool of the area rug, all he could see were Riddle’s calves, his socks, his shoes, the seams in the sofa cushions.

He put his hands tentatively on Riddle's knees, lifting himself into a kneel, while Riddle reached between them and made short work of his own button and zipper.

Riddle’s cock was as long and perfect as the rest of him, totally straight when erect. Harry couldn’t believe he’d taken it in his ass, with so little prep, out where the world could…

Riddle’s hand settled in his hair, guiding him nearer. Harry put his hands on Riddle’s thighs for balance. The feel of the suit fabric of his trousers was shockingly fine, like touching raw silk. Or maybe Harry was just overly sensitized; certainly Riddle’s fingertips felt like they were full of electricity, stroking sparks out of his scalp. He exhaled a stuttered breath as he opened his mouth for the head of Riddle’s cock, making Riddle’s hand tighten reflexively on his head, pulling his hair.

Harry moaned and Riddle, breathing a curse, pulled Harry harder, lifting his hips. This rift in his composure made Harry bravely rein in his urge to choke and struggle, instead relaxing the muscles in his throat consciously, taking a deep breath through his nose in the last half-second before Riddle sank past his palate and into his throat.

Harry forced himself to stay unresisting for a long moment, but then instinct took over and he jerked his head back, meeting the unrelenting pressure of Riddle’s hand on his head.

But the resistance went out of Riddle’s hand before Harry could totally panic, staying in place but gently, so he was cradling Harry’s head as he came off Riddle’s cock, gasping, long strings of saliva connecting him obscenely to Riddle’s slick length, red and swollen with wanting. With wanting  _ Harry _ . He groaned and levered himself up on his hands for a better angle and sank back onto Riddle’s cock without even being urged.

Riddle continued to cup the back of his head, gently now but still insistent.

Harry wasn’t inexperienced at sucking cock per se, though it had been a while. But this moment felt entirely new and foreign; he’d never deep-throated anyone Riddle’s size, and when he _had_ taken someone deeply in the past it had it had been half-accidental; an over-eager partner who got carried away and thrust once or twice.

This was different. Riddle’s hips, after that first little hitch, stayed still, only his hands moving, holding Harry's head with gentle pressure. It was Harry who exerted himself, braced on Riddle's thighs with his elbows bent til the muscles in his arms sang, raising and lowering his head till his neck ached, holding himself wide open til his jaw throbbed, forcing back the urge to choke until his throat was raw.

It was slow but punishing, steady but intense, and when Riddle finally shoved Harry down so his chin and his nose were nested in Riddle’s pubic hair--which smelled faintly of expensive soap, residual cologne and the starch from his slacks--Harry almost didn’t notice his blackening vision and slide toward unconsciousness. He’d muted and deafened the part of him that wanted to fight for air and could have suffocated happily in Riddle’s lap, his burning throat stinging from the acidic notes in Riddle’s come.

Riddle cradled his jaw and carefully pulled him off, then lay Harry’s cheek against his thigh. Harry’s breaths were long and measured; his lungs were sore.

Riddle stroked his hair. Harry heard a rustling, and realized that he’d picked up his book again. Harry couldn’t have moved if he tried, so he stayed there, arms and upper half flung across Riddle’s lap, Riddle carding his fingers through Harry’s hair, the only noise the popping fire and the occasional hush of turning pages.

***

Harry missed breakfast, which meant that Ron didn’t corner him again about social media until they broke for lunch.

Harry handed over his phone, sipping instant ramen from a Styrofoam cup and peering interestedly over Ron’s shoulder.

Ron had already been in touch with the PR department, which Harry probably should have realized existed somewhere in the site village, and gotten some of the stills they’d considered for their own promotion but decided not to use. The result was a few dozen high-resolution, professional photographs of Harry he hadn’t had to pay for.

“You’re good at this,” he observed, wincing at the rasp of his voice. He’d avoided speaking all day for that reason, which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like the crew would immediately suspect he’d blown Tom Riddle in the middle of the project site the night before. Still, he had been jumpy all day, including when someone noted offhand that they were sure the fire wood receptacle had been full the day before.

“Well, I’m better-connected around here than I would be just anywhere,” Ron muttered, but he looked pleased. “Okay, here you go. If you want to run any posts by me, you could.”

“That seems ill-advised,” Lavender said, seating herself beside Harry. Her own selection from craft service was a pile of cheese slices topped with a pile of olives. Ron, noticing her plate, made a face.

“Because clearly  _ you _ have such refined tastes, Lav,” he said, rolling his eyes, but his smile was good-natured. “Are you volunteering to help our little underdog, then?”

Lavender looked thoughtful. “Maybe. But if I do you a favor, Potter, I’m allowed to call in my own some day.”

That sounded ominous. Harry agreed immediately, and gave her his phone. She sent him a text message, downloaded the image attachments, typed with her thumbs for about forty-five seconds and handed it back.

“Voila,” she said. “Don’t mention it.”

Harry looked at the app screen, seeing a post purportedly from his revamped account. It was a picture of a patch of the floor that had already been cleaned of adhesive, a scraper lying in the shot along with a rag and a plastic container of paint thinner. The text was “tfw you find original tile under the heinous sheet of linoleum on your #clnspecial project site.”

“Thanks, Lav,” Harry said, relaxing a little at the innocuous post. Not that he’d thought she’d try to sabotage him or anything, but there was something about Lavender that kept him guessing.

Then, Harry’s phone blew up with dozens of notifications from earlier in the day. Harry was so surprised by the buzz of haptic feedback he almost dropped it.

Ron snatched it out of his hands and swiped a few times to adjust the settings before handing it back. “There you go. I’ve silenced all notifications.”

Harry, relieved, accepted the phone but still looked at the now-unmoving screen with trepidation. “Thanks.” The photo on his home screen was the same one Ron had just helped him add to his Instagram profile. It was one of the stills the PR department had amassed, and in it Harry had both hands in his hair, undoing all Sasha’s hard work, and an enormous smile. He remembered the moment: they’d been scoping out the kitchen and when they pulled up the linoleum in the closet, they’d found the original intact hexagon tile.

“Are you sure about this?” he murmured to Ron. In the photo his t-shirt had ridden up and you could see a hint of the tattoo on his hip and the seam of his boxers. A part of him thought it was ridiculous.

“Yep,” Ron said, popping the ‘p’. “It’s a hot photo.”

Harry shot him a quick look, and Ron blinked innocently. “Sorry, do you feel objectified?”

Harry rolled his eyes and groped around for something to throw at him. Lavender helpfully handed him a plastic putty knife, and Harry caught Ron right in the center of his chest. He’d always had great aim.

***

Around four, the producers showed up to herd them all off site. They’d told them that morning that the camera crews would be coming through for footage and stills of the project sites, and in a couple locations, some lead paint and asbestos testing.

That meant there was no chance of an evening rendezvous with Tom Riddle.

Harry couldn’t identify his reaction to that knowledge. He was overwhelmed by the very thought of Riddle. He kept all his reflections to a minimum because he knew he’d get hopelessly lost in thought if he tried to untangle them, and he had no time for any of that in the middle of the project.

But he knew it disappointed him that there was no chance of seeing Riddle tonight. He didn’t have to let his feelings linger to be sure of that much.

He went to dinner with the crew at a Hardee’s in a neighboring town. He found out they all knew each other from working together on a pilot that hadn’t gotten picked up.

“I could have told you from the first day of filming that it wasn’t going anywhere,” Seamus announced, red-faced from his third mixed drink, all of them pink and garnished with cherries. “That guy was an  _ asshole _ . He tried to hide it but even the camera could tell.”

They all nodded in agreement. “Lucky for the crew, we get paid whether the pilot is picked up or not,” Dean told Harry. “I always feel sorry for the producers in those things though.”

George and Fred looked at him with exaggerated dismay. “Pity?” George asked, clapping a hand to his heart like he’d been shot there. 

“A  _ producer _ ?” Fred finished, narrowing his eyes. “Do you like to pet the sharks at the aquarium, too?”

“Don’t insult the sharks,” Dean said, grinning, and the whole table laughed except, notably, Lavender, who pretended to check her phone.

Harry’s phone buzzed and he picked it up, annoyed, because hadn’t he  _ just _ double-checked that his application notifications were all turned off?

But then he saw a text message, not an app notification, on the screen. From an unknown  number.

There was no text, only a photo. The buffer symbol spun for just a few moments, then it flashed into vivid full-color.

It was a little blurry, with a dark shape in the foreground that must have been the twigs or branches of whatever cover the person had been concealed in. But it was still unmistakably a picture of Harry, shoved up against the door of the project site with his jeans around his legs.

A second message appeared below the first. Text this time. 

**Unknown number: This one is my favorite, but it’s not the only one I have. Gather $50,000 or I’ll leak it to the press. Instructions on delivery to follow.**

“Shit, Harry, are you okay?” 

Harry’s ears were ringing. He swiped the screen clear and looked up anxiously at Ron, but it was obvious from Ron’s puzzled expression that he hadn’t see anything.

“I…” Harry slid out of the booth. “I’ve got to go take a piss.”

“Charming,” Lavender said, sipping at her straw.

Harry shut himself in a bathroom stall and looked at the messages again. His heart was beating hard, shock and shame and worry all colliding. He squinted carefully at the photograph. As he’d noticed before, he was unmistakable in the picture. His cheek was turned against the door so his face was easily visible to the camera. 

But behind him, Riddle could have been anyone. Anyone tall and beautifully proportioned and dark-haired, that is…

In the photo, that stark figure of Riddle, half-melting into the darkness around the house with his dark coat and his dark pants and his dark head, had one hand planted next to Harry’s head, the other disappearing around Harry’s front, not visible and yet, it was unmistakable what he was doing…

“Fuck,” Harry breathed, realizing in horror that he was getting hard.

He couldn’t help it, he thought, his hand pressing firmly against his crotch as he slumped against the wall of the bathroom stall. He palmed himself through his jeans. Someone had seen them. The threat of it, being seen taken out in the open, had been an undeniable turn-on in the moment. But knowing someone had seen—that someone had  _ taken pictures _ —felt unutterably filthy. Just as he’d felt when his knees hit the floor on Riddle’s command to crawl.

_ What is wrong with you _ ? Harry wondered, jerking his hand away from his cock and grappling for something else to cling to. His palm found the square, cold metal of the toilet paper dispenser and he squeezed down on it til the hard edges bit into his hand.

He typed out a reply, channeling all his fury with himself into this nameless asshole before he could think about it.

**Me: I don’t have $500 bucks let alone $50,000. Hope you enjoy your pictures, you perverted fuck.**

Though Harry wasn’t sure he had room to be name-calling in this regard, he pressed send.

Almost immediately, the recipient was typing a reply. Harry watched the three dots fade in and out at the bottom of the screen for an agonizing minute before the response came through.

**Unknown number: Maybe not, but your boyfriend has plenty. And let’s make it $100,000 since you’ve hurt my feelings. Am I the pervert here?**

Harry looked at the photo again. He was sure that Riddle wasn’t identifiable in the photo, but someone taking shots from that vantage point could easily have a whole collection. Maybe there was another one that showed Riddle’s face. Harry hesitated, then shoved his phone in his pocket. He’d already potentially made the situation worse, and he wasn’t the only one involved.

He’d have to tell Riddle about it before he did or said more. 

The problem was, he had no way of getting in touch with Riddle except for hanging around the project site around midnight.

Harry rubbed a hand through his hair. Just when he thought things couldn’t get more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> “I’d like to speak to Tom Riddle,” Harry said.
> 
> The young woman looked blank. “That’s not allowed.”
> 
> Harry blinked. “What?”
> 
> She narrowed her eyes behind her thick, acrylic-framed glasses. “None of the contestants are allowed to meet with Tom Riddle or otherwise communicate with him. For reasons of fairness. Obviously.” Then her critical look faded to be replaced with sympathy. “I can understand why you’d like to get on his good side, considering. But it’s just not allowed.”
> 
> Harry felt a sinking sensation and the urge to laugh, a strange combination. If only she knew.


	11. The Kitchen, Part Three

Seeking out Riddle through official channels proved difficult. Harry started at his trailer, where a beefy private bodyguard reading  _ Reader’s Digest _ hastily hid the magazine under his lawn chair and jumped to his feet, instantly imposing. Then he relaxed as the impulse passed.

“He’s not here,” he explained. “He’s really never here.”

Harry supposed that was to be expected. He couldn’t imagine Riddle  _ camping out _ , even in a luxury bus. He interviewed a couple of producers as surreptitiously as possible, but they never seemed to realize what he was getting at.  _ So, Tom Riddle is around somewhere, right _ ? he asked Margaret, one of the more approachable ones. It was a cool day and she had on a jacket over her cornflower-blue flannel shirt.  _ Oh,  _ Tom, she replied, laughing nervously like he’d brought up an old lover and not the headliner for the show they were all working on.  _ He usually shows up just a few minutes before the live portions. Already dressed and made up. And so polite! I think he might know my name. Once, I think he winked at me. Lyle says he was just squinting, but the sun was barely in his eyes at all _ .

Finally Harry had to be direct about it. He was running out of time; he was already late to meet the crew at the project site and the fleet of white Jettas was dwindling; soon he’d have to walk, losing even more precious minutes.

The assistant producer he decided to ask wasn’t one he recognized, but like the rest of them she was practically dressed and young, drinking from one of the Starbucks-branded cups you could pay extra for at the little stand by craft services.

“I’d like to speak to Tom Riddle,” Harry said.

The young woman looked blank. “That’s not allowed.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

She narrowed her eyes behind her thick, acrylic-framed glasses. “None of the contestants are allowed to meet with Tom Riddle or otherwise communicate with him. For reasons of fairness.  _ Obviously _ .” Her critical look faded to be replaced with sympathy. “I can understand why you’d like to get on his good side, considering. But it’s just not allowed.”

Harry felt a sinking sensation and the urge to laugh, a strange combination. If only she knew.

It finally occurred to him that he had gotten other guys’ numbers and done far less for it than crawl on the floor, suck their cocks or bend over, let alone all three.

The memory of the acts in question, even in passing, made Harry’s mouth dry. He shook himself and tried to focus on the task at hand.

Tomorrow was Tuesday. Riddle would be around then--had to be, because they were filming. Maybe there would be a way to get word to him, or even pass a message on set, though doing that while the cameras were rolling seemed like a dubious prospect.

So Harry tried to forget about the Unknown Number and its threats, throwing himself instead into the final stages of the kitchen so they’d have extra time for staging. Violet had already told him he needed to amp up the “Christmas stuff,” and Ron, his newly-minted pseudo-agent, had solemnly nodded in agreement.

Unfortunately, there was still so much adhesive left over from the linoleum on the tile floor, the entire crew spent three hours finishing that task, all on their hands and knees and with quickly-dwindling good cheer, under the glare of a dozen trouble lights strung up over the cabinets like blooming vines.

Harry was so sore and exhausted, his head aching in the dull sort of way that comes from squinting too hard for too long, he couldn’t even obsess about his would-be blackmailer, much less the way he’d  _ serviced _ Tom Riddle on hands and knees. Or more troubling yet, how he’d leaned into the warmth of his lap and the cool caress of his hands afterward in an hour of sterling silence.

Well, maybe he wasn’t too tired to obsess, after all.

He felt strangely awake after he’d showered, standing still damp and naked at the foot of his bed and looking at it like he hadn’t seen it before. He’d tossed his phone on top of the rumpled blankets on his way to the bathroom and it still lay there, innocuous, a rectangle of plastic casing and dark glass screen.

He leaned over just enough to pick it up and then, still standing, swiped it into life. He navigated to his text messages, opened Unknown Number and scrolled up to the photo. Opened it. Enlarged it.

For a moment, the act of zooming in and panning made the photo seem animated, a short rolling clip like a gif, where Riddle tightened then eased his grip on Harry’s waist, surging forward then rolling back. That was how it had felt, tight and close and deep, each thrust short and punishing.

Harry put his phone in his left hand and eased his right toward his cock, which had been at varying stages of hardness throughout the day, luckily nothing he couldn’t adjust his jeans to mask. But he was quickly swelling against his own touch, as though his body had been waiting all day for him to indulge in this strange and shameful impulse.

It wasn’t like anyone would know.

He cupped his palm against himself, fingertips angled down to rasp over his own balls, then turned his wrist and grasped himself by the shaft while he filled out, hard and throbbing already. He bit his lip and staggered forward so his knees were braced against the edge of the bed.

But someone had known, hadn’t they? This  _ stranger _ . 

Harry whimpered.

Whomever it was — he or she — had hit out and seen them. Photographed them. Now they had these pictures, too, whoever they were.

His hand picked up speed, his wrist loose, his stare intent on the small image on the screen as he began to pant.

Maybe they had liked it, seeing him like this. Watching Riddle, strong and sure, shoving Harry into place and kicking his legs apart. He remembered Riddle’s taunts in his ears, telling Harry that Harry liked it, being fucked out in the open where anyone could see.

Riddle hadn’t known, Harry thought, but then he imagined —  _ What if he had _ ?

What if Riddle had known there were others watching and just hadn’t cared. Wanted to show them how Harry took it, what a whore Harry was for him. Because, wasn’t he? Maybe Harry could say he was taken by surprise the first night, but Riddle hadn’t had to reach for him roughly, pin him and jerk down his jeans, that night in the living room. No; he’d just had to tell Harry, and Harry had  _ crawled _ .

Harry whimpered, feeling like he was teetering on the edge, eyes suddenly stinging with tears just as they had when he’d crawled to Riddle with the newly-built fire heating his back.

What if--Harry dared to think, squeezing his eyes shut in shame--what if the lurker in the bushes had shown the photos off, to all their friends, people Harry didn’t know…?

He came so hard he had to reach out and catch himself against the mattress, dropping his phone in the process. He heard it hit the carpet, the soft noise of its impact a punctuation, just like the irregular white marks he’d splattered on the navy blue blanket. A blanket someone else washed for him.

_ Fuck _ , Harry thought miserably. He really needed Riddle. To talk to Riddle. Clearly he wasn’t…

Clearly Harry wasn’t himself. 

_ Was he? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t want to do this,” Harry said flatly.
> 
> Riddle arched an eyebrow like Harry had said something amusing. He stepped closer so that only the line of his jaw was in focus. He touched the edge of Harry’s glasses right by his temple.
> 
> “You’re wearing glasses,” he said with an absent frown. “You don’t usually.”
> 
> Yes he did; it was only since Sasha took charge of Harry’s appearance that he regularly wore his contacts.
> 
> He leaned away from Riddle’s hand, trying to focus. “I said…”
> 
> “Oh, yes,” Riddle said coolly, not stepping away. His hand fell away from Harry’s face and his knuckles traced a path from the center of Harry’s chest to his navel instead. “I heard you. You said _no._ ”


	12. The Kitchen, Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s a bit shorter — and so was yesterday’s I know! — hope you still like it. ❤️

From: Neville Longbottom

To: Malfoy Talent Mgmt., Inc.; Hermione Granger and 16 more

Re: Adjustment to Holiday Special production, December 10

Team:

I know it’s last minute and not everyone was confident about the change-up, but after considering everyone’s input I’ve decided to pull the trigger on the adjustment to the master script that Malfoy pitched.

That means we’ll have Sam incorporate an announcement about the prize into the lead-in. We’ll let the contestants be surprised. 

Whoever wins the vote tonight will be informed about the party tomorrow morning, and we’ll close work on all projects for 24 hours for reasons of fairness, while the prize winner is flown out to Mr. Riddle’s property.

Production will ship out to set up. Malfoy, just to make sure we have everything in place for them when they show up, can you call me? Since it’s an island I don’t want to risk leaving my people literally at sea.

So excited for this turn, and I know viewers will be too!

best, 

\- N. Longbottom

***

**Unknown Number: I heard you were looking for someone. Be waiting in your trailer at 11 pm. Alone.**

***

Harry was pacing in the trailer at 10:59, wondering if he’d just agreed by inaction to a meeting with his blackmailer or with Riddle, when there was a soft knock.

Harry froze and stared, but before he could decide what to do, the knob twisted slowly, like whomever was trying it assumed it would be locked. It wasn’t.

The latch gave and the door eased open enough for a man in a black coat with a snow-dusted hood to slip inside, closing it silently behind him.

Harry hadn’t seen his face, but the shape of Riddle was still unmistakable. His anxiety over wondering who would come to the door shifted to an entirely different kind of tension.

Riddle took off his coat and slung it over the back of the hair at Harry’s desk, which he’d used as a dumping ground for various items over the past several days. Harry was suddenly conscious of how rumpled his unmade bed was, how he’d left an empty takeout container on the vanity and there was a single sock he’d failed to collect when he’d hastily picked up his laundry twenty minutes earlier.

“So, what is it that couldn’t wait?” Riddle tilted his head, finally turning his focus on Harry. His nose was red from exposure to the cool snowy night. He removed his calfskin gloves and Harry saw that his knuckles were the same color. He remembered how even with the fire burning and making the living room nearly too hot, Riddle’s skin had felt almost cool. Except for his—

_Not the time._

“I’d rather have you in that kitchen of yours. The tile—what a find. But the classic touch on the cabinets was well done. The shaker look, the glass uppers.” He was coming toward Harry now, an assessing gleam in his eyes. “It’s almost like you wanted me to like it.” He wet his lower lip, in front of Harry but not yet touching, his nearness making Harry’s heart race. It had only taken a few encounters apparently for Harry’s body to react to Riddle’s scent and voice as helplessly as Pavlov’s salivating dog.

“I like you contrite,” he said, leaning in.

The sense of things spiraling out of his control struck Harry and he said flatly, “I don’t want to do this.”

Riddle arched an eyebrow like Harry had said something amusing. He stepped closer so that only the line of his jaw was in focus. He touched the edge of Harry’s glasses right by his temple.

“You’re wearing glasses,” he said with an absent frown. “You don’t usually.”

Yes he did; it was only since Sasha took charge of Harry’s appearance that he regularly wore his contacts.

He leaned away from Riddle’s hand, trying to focus. “I said…”

“Oh, yes,” Riddle said coolly, not stepping away. His hand fell away from Harry’s face and his knuckles traced a path from the center of Harry’s chest to his navel instead. “I heard you. You said _no_.”

“Y-Yeah I did,” Harry stammered. He’d had good reason, too.

What was the reason?

In a rush, Harry remembered. His phone felt heavy as lead in his pocket and he took a stumbling backward step, uncharacteristically clumsy.

He glanced up into Riddle’s puzzled expression. “I have to show you something,” Harry muttered and rolled his eyes when Riddle’s confused frown shifted to a smirk.

“Not like that,” he hissed, cheeks burning, and dug out his phone. Riddle remained much too close, but said nothing, waiting almost patiently for Harry to swipe to the messages, then hold the phone up between them with the screen pointed at Riddle.

Riddle’s face pulled into a frown and he reached up to grasp Harry’s wrist, moving Harry’s arm closer to his body and higher, too, in a way that made his muscles pull tight across his fluttering stomach.

 _Not the time_ , he reminded himself harshly, focusing on Riddle’s expression as he placed the screen where he could see it. He wears reading glasses, Harry remembered, reminded of Riddle’s age in a way that redoubled the stomach-flutters.

_Not. The. Time._

Riddle’s eyes were getting narrower and narrower and his hold on Harry’s wrist was getting tighter and tighter. Finally Harry made a small, involuntary sound that only had a little to do with the pain of the compression, and Riddle’s eyes snapped to Harry’s face.

He let Harry go and took a smooth backward step, then another.

Harry watched him carefully, rubbing his arm as he dropped his phone back into his pocket. “So,” he said hesitantly when Riddle said nothing. “What do you…?”

The question trailed off because Harry didn’t know what he meant to ask. He’d expected Riddle to seize control. Had wanted him to. And instead Riddle was looking into the middle distance with a furrow in his brows like he had no better idea of what to do than Harry.

Then his expression cleared. “Forward me the messages. I’ll take care of it.”

Harry blinked. “I can’t.”

Riddle’s smile was back in an instant, faintly mocking, far too fond. “Afraid I’ll sell the picture myself? You do look very nice in it. But a bad photograph pales compared to my own vivid memories.”

“That’s—not—” At this rate Harry was sure he’d burst some capillaries in his cheeks. “I don’t have your number! I can’t forward them because I don’t have your number.” 

Riddle’s brows climbed. “Yes you do.”

Harry felt his grip on his patience slip. “No, I fucking don’t.”

Riddle’s small smile curved into that rarer, larger one where his perfect, even teeth showed between his perfect, parted lips. “I sent you a text earlier today.”

Harry was startled into a rueful laugh. He rubbed his face with both hands. “Of course that was you.”

“Of course. Who else?”

Riddle said the last two words in a steely way that surprised Harry into looking at him through parted fingers. He dropped his hands, shocked. Riddle was jealous at the thought Harry might think a suggestive text had more than one source.

He filed that baffling knowledge away as he reached for his phone again and saved the number to his contacts so he could forward the messages to it. He did it all quickly, before he could overthink it. Riddle wouldn’t sell the picture—probably—and if he did Harry really didn’t think he’d care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> It was so loud they couldn’t speak, but one look at Riddle’s smug face told Harry everything he needed to know.
> 
> Riddle swung up into the seat, not bothering to use the running board, and held out a hand for Harry.
> 
> The wind off the propellers was twisting Harry’s hair into his eyes, so he was nearly blinded by it when he reached out to take Riddle’s hand. Immediately Riddle’s large, smooth hand closed firmly around Harry’s and pulled him up into the helicopter cabin with him.


	13. The Party, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS thank you so much for your feedback. Today is my birthday which is really just a day, but it's been made extra fun by hearing from you all. I cherish every bookmark, kudos and subscribe and devour your comments. Thank you.

Harry met the crew back at the project site for a champagne toast at midnight. Strangely, the whole street seemed more lively than the other times Harry had come out to the house. Then, it had seemed like he was sneaking through an abandoned city, but now it felt light an extension of the site village, almost as much of a set as it was during the daytime. 

“To our most beautiful creation,” George said, standing on a chair and reaching out for the bottle that Fred had just given a vigorous shake.

“You’re going to make it go everywhere,” Dean complained.

“That’s the point, Thomas,” Lavender said patiently.

“That’s what she said,” Seamus snuck in, eliciting a collective groan of exasperation from the rest of the team.

Harry smiled, half-dazed with relief. Now that he’d told Riddle about the pictures, and had a way to make contact, two threads of tension he hadn’t realized were twisting through him had been cut.

Not to mention, the kitchen had turned out beautifully. There was a reason white was a classic color, Harry thought, looking around to admire the way all the light in the room seemed softened and absorbed by the cabinets and walls. They’d staged the kitchen with a silver tray on the island filled with glass cannisters of baking ingredients, peppermints and jelly beans, and a small assembled gingerbread house that Lavender had spent three hours putting together, an amazing and painstaking replica of the house complete with a pretzel-stick pergola.

Across the ladder-backed stools at the island were swaths of oversized gold ribbon and tin bells. 

“Okay, here we go,” George called, bracing the bottom of the bottle against his torso as he worked loose the cork. They all braced for something cinematic but with a resounding pop, the cork flew only a few inches and the froth of foam dribbled down the bottle onto George’s hands, making him exclaim.

After they’d all laughed and Fred had passed around plastic flutes to everyone, Harry realized something.

“Where’s Ron?” He’d been there when Harry came in, but in the back of the room on his phone. Now he was nowhere in sight.

“I wouldn’t send out the missing persons unit yet,” Seamus advised. “He was here a minute ago.”

But time stretched and Ron didn’t return. Harry wasn’t too preoccupied though; he was enjoying the buzz of the champagne, almost instant given his empty stomach, and simply standing amongst a group of people he liked, a simple pleasure that warmed him in a way few other things did. He didn’t have a friend group back home, not since school. He missed it.

Some members of another crew wandered in, accompanied by a contestant Harry thought seemed nice named Ezra. They looked around with interest, greeting Harry’s crew familiarly. One of the crew members, a wiry girl with close-cropped blond hair and dark brown freckles, threw her arm around Seamus and messed up his hair. He was torn between objecting and laughing, but when he got himself free he introduced everyone to one another. Apparently he’d worked with many of them before.

“It looks really good in here, Harry,” Ezra said, his dark eyes solemn under his slightly long, curly bangs. He looked sort of like a pretty spaniel, all calm sweetness. “Congratulations

Ezra’s crew was much noisier than him, and after they made a few quips about the “staggering creativity of white-everything” in kitchen design, they invited Harry and his crew over to see their house.

That was how Harry wound up on an increasingly-drunken, whirlwind tour of the town. The night was blisteringly cold with a sharp wind, so they bundled into the back of an unattended catering van to go from one house to the next. Harry saw all twelve remaining contestants’ spaces. He thought it would be a tough call for the audience to winnow it down to ten, reminded how much luck was involved in this whole process. 

When it was almost two, Seamus reminded everyone loudly that they had only an hour left before last call at the local strip joint, which he’d apparently frequented over the past ten days.

“That place is gross,” Dean said. “You’re gross.” 

No one was particularly sober at this point; they’d only shared three bottles of champagne (the stuff Ezra’s crew had shared was much higher quality than what the twins had provided) but they were all sleep-deprived and, in Harry’s case, drinking on an empty stomach.

“It’s not gross!” Seamus looked indignant. “It’s _rustic_.”

“Doesn’t rustic just mean old?” Lavender asked, blinking sweetly at Seamus. At some point Violet had joined them and neither she nor Lavender were pretending their relationship was a secret anymore. They had their arms around one another’s waists and most of Lavender’s lipstick was smeared under and around Violet’s left ear, the result of a fascinating demonstration earlier in the back of the van that felt like it had taken place in Harry’s lap, and eliminated his indecision about whether he was “just gay.”

“That is what it means,” Seamus allowed cautiously, “in _part_.”

“Then the _dancers_ are definitely rustic,” George said, leering. “I like that in a stripper.”

“Harry will come with me,” Seamus said, swinging around to squint at Fred. Then he realized that Fred wasn’t Harry and pivoted again until he caught sight of Harry, who gave a helpful little wave over Lavender’s head. 

“Don’t be a bad influence,” Lavender said, rounding on Seamus with a raised forefinger and bright eyes. “He has to be on camera in the morning.”

“So do we,” Seamus complained. “Fine, Harry. No strip club for you.”

Harry laughed. “I’ll survive somehow.” 

Lavender was looking thoughtfully at Seamus. “Actually…” she began, but didn’t finish.

“Go get your beauty rest,” Violet advised, reaching out to pat Harry’s arm. He smiled sheepishly at her, trying to look her in the eye without his gaze drifting toward the lipstick marks. 

“Yeah, I’d better.”

“Faye will drive you,” Violet continued. “Faye doesn’t drink. She’s Swedish.”

Lavender nodded like this was impeccable logic, watching Violet text the thirty-something assistant producer who had been driving the van before their last stop. Now they were on the lawn of Charles Armando’s project. Harry frowned down at the sod, which was already browning at the edges.

“She’s coming,” Violet declared, with a sunny smile for Harry as though Faye was a visiting monarch and not a designated driver. Though in the present moment, cold and suddenly exhausted, her enthusiasm seemed perfectly proportionate.

***

Harry woke up to banging on his door that turned out to be Violet, who took in his rumpled clothes with a nervous eye.

“You need to look like you just woke up, and yet a little less like you just woke up,” she advised. “Cameras are coming by in fifteen minutes. I’ll wait out here.” It was cold, with a whistling wind, but she looked like her mind was made up and Harry really didn’t want to change out of yesterday’s clothes with her in the room, so he obediently closed the door, blinking himself into better alertness while he switched on the lights and looked for respectable pajamas. Unfortunately Sasha hadn’t provided any of those. He settled for one of the crew’s green sweatshirts that Ron had leant him the other day and a pair of his least threadbare sweats, and opened the door again, wondering if he’d imagined Violet in the first place. Sometimes he had vivid dreams.

But no, she was there, cradling a travel mug in two hands and elbowing him out of the way so that she could come into the warm trailer. Cold emanated from her puffy coat as she brushed past Harry and he closed the door.

“So what exactly is going on?” he asked her, sitting on the end of the bed and looking enviously at the fragrant steam curling out of the slotted lid on her mug.

“They’re about to tell you that you won the audience voting,” she said, looking breathless with excitement or cold or both. “And that you’ve also won a trip to Tom Riddle’s island on the Cape, to rub elbows with beautiful people and get a taste of what it means to be famous, I think. Anyway, they’ll tell you, you’ll be surprised, then you’ll probably have an hour to get made up before they put you on a helicopter.”

Harry stared at her. He was definitely awake. This was sillier than anything he would have dreamt up.

“I know,” she said, seeing his expression. “That’s kind of the face I made when they told me. Like, this is a renovation competition, isn’t it? Not the Bachelor.” She laughed at her own joke then looked down to sip her coffee, thankfully, because Harry didn’t want to know how telling his reaction to that remark would have been.

Because that _was_ what it sounded like. That he’d won a _date_ with Tom Riddle. Then another piece of information struck him.

“Wait. I won? The audience voting?” He got to his feet, grinning. 

Violet smiled. “Yep.”

He’d known the kitchen looked good, but last night seeing all the other projects too, he’d been struck by how high quality all the work was. They were given different houses, different challenges, sure, but all the designers were talented and all the crews were capable. To Harry’s discomfort it looked like the final results would come down as much to luck as anything else.

Still, it felt _good_ to _win_. He couldn’t deny it.

There was another knock on the door. Violet’s eyes widened. “I’m going there,” she said, pointing at the bathroom, then hesitated. “Unless it’s really gross. You are a guy. Living alone.”

“It’s fine,” Harry said, then hesitated as well. “I think.”

There was another knock and then, left with no choice, Violet sighed and hurried through the half-open door, snapping it closed behind her. Harry braced himself for the cameras, and opened the exterior door.

***

Sasha was delighted. Apparently Sasha wasn’t one for small towns.

“No society,” he complained as he held Harry by the chin in his soft, fragrant hands and tilted his face to and fro to decide how best to address the dark circles beneath his eyes. “No culture.”

“You make it sound like you’ve been here eleven months instead of eleven days,” Harry pointed out, amused.

“Every day is precious,” Sasha said seriously, narrowing his eyes, carefully outlined in black liquid eyeliner, at Harry in reproach. “One day in purgatory is one too many.”

“Seamus highly recommends the strip club,” Harry offered. “Apparently it’s quite rustic.”

Sasha muttered and pinched his cheeks, but his big fingers were like pillows, soft and gentle no matter what they did, and the reprimand just made Harry laugh.

“Now, clothes,” Sasha declared, holding up a charcoal button-down that was a far cry from the high quality but practical attire he normally dressed Harry in. “Don’t look at me like that, kid. You’re going to a _party_ attended by the filthy rich, not a dirty work site. What did you expect?”

When he was outfitted to Sasha’s satisfaction and his own dismay, Harry headed out to meet the cameras—and Riddle—so that the producers could capture something for their “Cinderella montage” as Ron had jokingly labeled it. After the camera crew left earlier, and Violet snuck out shortly thereafter, Harry sent Ron a series of alarmed text messages culminating with _ARE YOU MY FAKE MANAGER OR WHAT_ , before remembering that Ron had skipped out of the champagne-toast-turned-tour the night before and Harry didn’t even know where he was. But Ron had replied within a few minutes, come straight over, and helped Harry pack and prepare with a level head.

As a result of Ron calling around, Harry knew that they would be filmed off and on traveling to the Cape and upon their arrival, that he’d be traveling _with_ Riddle, and that he’d be gone just over twenty-four hours before he was spirited back to start work on the guest room and try to squeeze in some sort of transformation in a mere twenty-four hours. It was ridiculous and nerve-racking and Harry couldn’t wait.

***

He experienced a little trepidation, though, when he walked out toward the cameras and Riddle, awaiting him on the edge of the helicopter pad.

“Okay Harry?” Violet looked up at him from under the straight pale blond line of her bangs. He wondered how she managed to look so sharp when he knew she’d had even less sleep than he had. Then her look softened. “The cameras will be on most of the time. He’ll _have_ to play nice.”

Harry’s voice came out too high when he said, “I don’t think that’s exactly the effect the cameras have on him.”

Riddle pivoted and saw Harry. His chin tilted up, and even across the distance Harry thought he could see his dark eyes gleam. Harry’s stomach turned over. Beside Riddle, the cameras saw Harry too and adjusted, one of them walking swiftly around to pan over Riddle’s face. The knowing look Harry had glimpsed gave way to one of determined dislike, as though Harry was a spoonful of necessary but foul-tasting medicine.

 _A persona_ , Riddle had called it. It was fascinating to see how swiftly Riddle could take it on and off.

There was a distant rhythmic pulsing or helicopter blades. Harry looked up to see the shape of the craft, a big one with a lengthened passenger compartment, dark navy blue and cutting swiftly through the air toward the pad, getting louder every moment.

Harry channeled his nervous energy into digging his thumbnail into his wrist and feeling the grounding sting of the welt it raised. He remembered Ron’s instructions and tried to smile, hoping he didn’t look ill.

Riddle reached out smoothly as Harry neared. Offering his hand. Harry took it as the helicopter tipped down in its final descent, undoing all Sasha’s work on Harry’s already difficult hair.

“Congratulations,” Riddle said with cool professionalism and rubbed a circle on Harry’s palm with his thumb, a secret, electrifying pressure.

Harry snatched his hand back, wondering if he’d imagined it based on Riddle’s puzzled frown. Then the cameramen stepped back so they could board and Riddle looked at Harry again with a brow raised.

It was so loud they couldn’t speak, but one look at Riddle’s smug face told Harry everything he needed to know.

Riddle swung up into the seat, not bothering to use the running board, and held out a hand for Harry.

Harry wasn’t sure he could touch Riddle this much and keep his cool on camera, so he froze.

The wind off the propellers was twisting Harry’s hair into his eyes, so he was nearly blinded by it when he reached out to take Riddle’s hand. Immediately Riddle’s large, smooth hand closed firmly around Harry’s and pulled him up into the helicopter cabin with him.

It was warm inside, startlingly so, and as the doors closed the sound of the propellers was surprisingly muted though still too strong to speak over. Harry sat in the seat across from Riddle and pulled shaking hands through his ruined hair.

Riddle sat too, his eyes never leaving Harry, and held out a headset. Harry put it on and blinked at the abrupt silence.

Except it wasn’t really silent. The set canceled out the surrounding noise, but it also put Riddle’s voice in his ear when he said, “Don’t forget to buckle your seatbelt, Harry.”

Harry shuddered, eyes locking with Riddle’s, feeling for a moment like despite the people—the _cameras_ —on the other side of the windows and— 

“Ready for takeoff, Mr. Riddle?” asked the pilot, right in Harry’s ear just as Riddle had been.

Riddle, clearly amused by Harry’s dumbfounded reaction, slowly finished fastening his own harness and watched Harry’s trembling hands do the same before he said, “Yes, thank you, Nott. Take us away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> Of course it was unbelievably hot, being reeled in slowly by his loosened tie as Riddle doubled it once over his fist, then again, and again—
> 
> But Harry was reformed. He wasn’t going to let Riddle jeopardize his future.
> 
> _Right?_
> 
> _Right._
> 
> Harry pulled back so the tie was taut against his neck and glared up at Riddle. “No,” he said, knocking Riddle’s hand away and feeling, somehow, more breathless in the moment the pressure on his throat disappeared. “I’m not doing this anymore.”


	14. The Party, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled a bit today and didn't get as far as I'd hoped. Hope you enjoy anyway.

Before he’d even gotten off the helicopter, Harry was dizzy from being jerked back and forth between one side of Riddle and the other. The side he showed when people might notice: distant, almost cold, dismissive. And the side he showed when only Harry would notice: immediate, intense, proprietary.

It wasn’t that long a flight, but it sure felt like it. When they reached the airport and got out of the helicopter directly onto the tarmac to board a private plane, a slim jet with the CLN logo under each wing, Harry’s legs felt like jelly.

There was more production on the flight, so Riddle kept his distance. Harry was grateful, spending most of that time texting Ron and returning other messages that were several days old from back home. A few from his closer friends and, bafflingly, one from Aunt Petunia.

**P. Dursley: Good luck.**

It was amazing how that period seemed to convey precisely Petunia’s voice, short and put-upon, like she was wishing Harry well at gunpoint. But she liked television and the idea of Harry becoming famous would be hell on her competing impulses, he knew. The hope that Harry would have a miserable life, versus her lifelong aspiration to be associated with notable people.

Oh, God. If this show somehow forced him to mend fences with his aunt and uncle, it wouldn’t be worth the money or leg up in his career. The only thing worse than their absent cruelty would be watching them try to be _nice_. It made Harry ill just thinking about it, so he deleted Petunia’s message without a reply.

There was another from Mrs. Figg, clearly sent from her ancient track phone and split into several short messages that came in the wrong order.

**Mrs. Figg:**

**(2/4)**

**ed eleven times! And they said the limit is 10! But I guess not! Next time I’ll go for**

**(4/4)**

**now you would be better. Take care honey~**

**Mrs. Figg:**

**(1/4)**

**Harry! So proud of you! I vot**

**Mrs. Figg:**

**(3/4)**

**12! The boy they sent to paint did a nice job but I k**

Harry answered with a simple thanks and a few specific questions about the cats with names he could remember. She answered within forty-five seconds so he spent some time guiltily texting her back and forth until she said she needed to go watch the weather. Hearing from her made Harry feel more homesick than anyone else. He recalled, after adjusting to her strangeness, the way her cluttered and musty little house with the shrouded windows and the half-inch of dust on every crowded surface had come to feel like a sanctuary. It was a bone-deep debt he knew he couldn’t pay back, but when he had occasion to help her or just make her smile he tried to take advantage of it, and that was the best he could do.

When he put his phone in his lap and looked out the window at the clouds outside its little oval pane, he felt calmer than he had in days. Than he had even for the months leading up to the call from Hermione Granger, much less the chaotic two weeks since. It was unsettling to have this brief, balanced perspective on his life as a whole, something he was in the middle of and that stretched into the invisible distance, rather than just being absorbed by the immediate present.

From this calm vantage point, he saw the scope of the opportunity he had on the show. Not just to prove he was a good designer, not just to advance his effort to collect a few followers on social media and a few more odd jobs around his neighborhood, but to carve out a stable and comfortable future. Something exciting, yes, but peaceful, too. That elusive central peace that came from being spared the constant worry of what might happen next and whether you would weather it or wind up out on the street.

From this same vantage point he realized how irresponsible he was being by indulging Riddle—or indulging himself with Riddle, or both, whatever it was. He was risking everything every time he let Riddle get his hands on him. He wasn’t worried about the photo before, but now he realized what it would mean if it got out. Harry could hardly win a competition where he’d been having sex in secret with the headliner, could he? Or even if he did, the story would just be how he’d tried to sleep his way to a win, or worse, painted as a tragedy where he was taken advantage of. Even the thought made a sour taste bloom on his tongue.

He had to stay away from Riddle when the cameras were off, he resolved. 

He ignored the voice in his head that insisted, plaintively, that there was no guarantee they’d get caught, and no one had made him feel like Riddle did…

But it wasn’t like Harry had slept with _that_ many men. He could find someone else to order him around. Maybe not quite as well as Riddle did it, and certainly not while looking as unutterably perfect as Riddle did, but still. There would be other men. There probably wouldn’t be another shot at even temporary fame, and the doors that could open for Harry going forward.

 _So that’s that_. He stole a glance at Riddle, sitting several rows ahead, facing away from Harry. He swallowed at just the sight of the curve of his head, his dark hair falling soft waves that just looked pleasantly tousled, even after the barrage of the helicopter before.

Harry resolutely looked out the window again. _Yeah. That’s that_.

***

They landed at another airport and got another helicopter. This time there weren’t cameras, and the seats were side-by-side so Harry’s arm was pressed against Riddle’s. His whole body was on high alert by the time he’d buckled in and shook his head mutely to decline the headset. Riddle gave him a knowing smile, leaned in, and spoke hot and audible right against the skin of his ear.

“Sulking?” He put his hand on Harry’s knee. “Oh no, what did I do wrong?”

Harry looked straight ahead and put his hand on Riddle’s, intending to remove it, but he seemed to lose all the strength in his arm and only rested it there, lightly grasping Riddle’s wrist, as Riddle’s hand slid up the inseam of Harry’s trousers, leaving a blazing trail up Harry’s thigh and—

Harry came to his senses, gripped Riddle’s wrist like he meant it, and turned his head to look him in the eye.

A mistake. Their faces were close, like they were about to kiss, or—

Riddle glanced toward the cockpit, probably gauging whether the pilot could see them. Harry dug his fingers into the soft underside of his wrist.

“Don’t,” he hissed, the soft word swallowed by the ambiant sound of the blades as they lifted into the air.

Riddle gave him an insufferable knowing look, and removed his hand.

Harry missed it immediately.

 _Get a grip_ , he reminded himself, trying to recapture the presence of mind he’d had on the jet. But when he looked out this window, he saw a troubled ocean, far too close for comfort, and then through a curtain of mist and fog, the coast of a tiny island crowned with a sprawling stone mansion that could only be called a castle.

Riddle had noticed his reaction, of course, and leaned back in. “Like it?”

Harry didn’t let himself look, but it wasn’t like that protected him from the effects of Riddle’s warm breath on his neck, or the intimacy of being spoken to right in his ear, or the cold brush of Riddle’s nose against his temple.

Harry angled his head slightly toward Riddle so his voice might carry and said, loud and flat, “Pretentious.”

Riddle wasn’t offended. Not that Harry had expected him to be. The chuckle that made its way into Harry’s ear was purely amused. They were nearing the demarcated spot on the castle’s grounds, which were all sculpted hedges and ornamental trees, the helicopter turning down its nose in a way that pressed Harry’s chest against the harness. Riddle squeezed Harry’s knee before Harry could fend him off, but dropped the touch right away. The helicopter had settled and someone had opened the doors from outside.

It was Hermione Granger, looking determinedly cheerful, and behind her a tall blond young man with angular features and wide grey eyes.

“Good afternoon Tom, Harry,” she said as the engines cut, leaving them in a sudden silence save the distant noise of the tide on the island’s sheer sides, a faraway crashing. “I hope your trip was uneventful.”

Harry didn’t dare look at Tom as he clambered out of the helicopter.

“It was just fine,” Riddle said calmly. “I would like a little time to show Harry around. That would be alright, wouldn’t it?”

Riddle smiled at Hermione with the cool expectant look of someone with every entitlement on the list. Harry took a deep breath through his nose and accidentally caught the blond man’s eye. He looked at Harry with narrow-eyed curiosity, then deliberately away.

“Sure,” Hermione said, voice a little strangled. “How long do you think…?”

“Oh, just an hour or two should do it,” Riddle said, cheerful and dismissive, willfully oblivious to the way Hermione paled. Harry, trapped, followed helplessly when Riddle gestured to him and struck off. The cameras followed close behind and Harry counted his breaths. It was one night, and then he’d be back in familiar terrain. He could handle this. He could handle Riddle.

****

The house was a study in vaulted ceilings, a flowing floor plan that combined the sense of airy, open space with cozy, livable nooks here and there. The decor was eclectic, curated, featuring raw wood carvings collected on Riddle’s world travels and a few graphic, oversized sketches drawn or painted directly on the walls by Riddle’s most famous artist friends. 

As much as he didn’t want to, Harry loved it, and Riddle looked increasingly smug as they traveled from one room to the next.

The presence of the camera crew was something of a comfort. They served as a barrier between Riddle and Harry, so that Harry could keep his mind on the task of absorbing all he could about the house and the moment, and think strategically about the night to come. He didn’t have to _also_ worry about coming undone for Riddle’s deliberate touch or hypnotic voice.

Of course, he should have known Riddle would find a way around any obstacle.

“Marcus,” he said to the assistant producer who was monitoring the shots. “I’d like to show Harry the basement.”

Harry stared. “The _basement_?”

Riddle ignored him. Marcus looked unsure, then nodded with a sigh. “Yeah, okay, guys, take five.”

And just like that the cameras were down and Riddle was ushering Harry through another closed door, but this time it was just the two of them in the room when it swung closed.

“How did you…” Harry began, sidestepping away from Riddle on instinct, somehow expecting Riddle to instantly pounce. He felt sheepish a moment before remembering he had good reason for that sort of impulse. Riddle _had_ shoved Harry up against a door and jerked his jeans down to fuck him within five minutes of being alone with him, the first time.

“Some parts of the property are off limits,” Riddle said, “for protection of certain intellectual property.” He pointed to the walls around them, and Harry realized that the small room was actually just the oversized landing to an unlit staircase which presumably led down to the basement.

On the walls were framed sketches of landscapes and buildings. Preliminary designs, all with Riddle’s neat initials in the lower right hand corner.

“I’m not going in your basement,” Harry said flatly. Granted it was a far cry from rickety steps down to a cellar illuminated by a single naked lightbulb—like everything else, this part of the house was grand. But the idea of going _underground_ with Riddle was ludicrous, like following a viper down into its pit.

“No? Well, it was only a ruse, anyway,” Riddle said, advancing. Harry hesitated a moment too long and before he could react, Riddle had seized him firmly by the middle of his necktie and _pulled_.

Of course it was unbelievably hot, being reeled in slowly by his loosened tie as Riddle doubled it once over his fist, then again, and again—

But Harry was reformed. He wasn’t going to let Riddle jeopardize his future.

_Right?_

_Right._

Harry pulled back so the tie was taut against his neck and glared up at Riddle. “No,” he said, knocking Riddle’s hand away and feeling, somehow, _more_ breathless in the moment the pressure on his throat disappeared. “I’m not doing this anymore.”

Riddle didn’t relent. “Doing what?” He tilted his head. “Whatever I ask?”

Harry’s heart kicked against his ribs. “I don’t—I didn’t—”

Riddle gave him a knowing look, then turned and strolled across the room to study one of his own sketches. Harry looked at it for a few seconds and realized it was the landscape design for the grounds he’d just seen. The plans had come to remarkable fruition; even with everything gone dormant, Harry could see that everything had filled in precisely as Riddle had intended it to.

“We have a busy evening ahead of us,” Riddle said thoughtfully, as though to himself. He turned back to Harry. “We can discuss what you will and won’t do afterward, when I have you to myself.”

“To yourself,” Harry echoed.

Riddle’s grin was swift and sharp. “Of course. I offered the guest wing here for production. That left just one room for you. Adjacent to mine.”


	15. The Party, Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh I’m late! 
> 
> I have no excuse, but I do have blame to redirect. I was told to take an evening off. I also sanded a staircase and baked cookies.

“Hello, Harry,” said a familiar voice, but still Harry jumped like he’d been shouted at, twisting around against the wrought-iron balcony bannister.

She was coming through the door when he looked, and he saw how she glanced behind her then carefully pulled it closed before turning to him with a calm smile.

“Aren’t you enjoying the party?” 

Harry wrinkled his nose before he could stop himself. Hermione’s polite smile turned into a grin. “Me either,” she said, sounding tired, and came over to stand next to him but facing opposite, looking out over the grounds while Harry faced the closed door and the scenes of the party still visible through the windows.

“Not really my thing,” Hermione continued. “Schmoozing, rubbing elbows, trying to anticipate the next angle. It’s part of my job I guess, but not my favorite part.”

Harry looked at her curiously. “What is your favorite part?”

Her answer was immediate. “The moment when things come together perfectly, and nothing like how I intended them to be.” She laughed a little. “If you knew me a few years ago, that answer would shock you. I’ve always liked to be in control of things.”

“Well, you’re showrunner,” Harry pointed out. “Can’t be more in control than that, can you?”

“That’s not really how it works,” Hermione said, with a sidelong smile, then look back out at the darkness again, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. She was wearing a classic blue dress with cap sleeves and an A-line skirt. It had been a strangely warm day, but the night was cool. Harry could see gooseflesh on her bare arms. “Not in live TV, anyway. It’s herding cats. Chaos. Except when it isn’t.” 

Harry chuckled. “Well, I admire you. I wouldn’t know how where to start.”

She glanced at him thoughtfully. “I’m not so sure about that.” 

Harry scuffed his toe against the engraved porcelain tile. “It was nice of you to come check on me.”

“I just wanted some fresh air.”

Harry smiled at her. “Really? You’re not freezing cold?”

She didn’t so much as rub her arms as she turned around so she too was leaning on the railing, holding his gaze. “Not really.”

Harry laughed and Hermione smiled again, all while watching him carefully. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head, but for some reason it was charming instead of off-putting, knowing that she was thinking about a dozen related but separate things even as they spoke in this moment. Her unruly hair was pinned up precariously on her head, but held firm when a night breeze snaked past and ruffle Harry’s own hair, fragrant from Sasha’s potions.

“I need to tell you something, Harry, but before I do I want you to know that I would never judge you, or anyone else, for what they choose to do in their personal life.”

_ Oh, fuck _ .  _ Here it comes _ .

“I know about you and Tom Riddle.”

_ Yeah. There it is _ .

Harry’s good humor from a moment before had fled. He was filled with the same panic that had made him flee the party for this hidden balcony in the first place. Hermione must have seen his reaction in his face, because she furrowed her brow and shook her head, holding up her hands in an “I’m not armed!” gesture.

“You’re not in any kind of trouble. Not with me.”

Harry’s panic eased, but only marginally. “I’m not?”

She shook her head, slowly lowering her hands.

“But it’s against the rules,” he said, a statement rather than a question.

“I don’t know that fraternizing with the contestants is directly addressed in Riddle’s contract, and fraternizing with the talent definitely isn’t addressed in yours.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not saying you should shout it from the rooftops,” she hastened to add. “There would be plenty of people involved in the show who wouldn’t like it, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t plan to tell any of them.”

“And how do  _ you _ know?”

“Draco Malfoy told me.”

Harry squinted at her. “ _ Draco _ ? Is that really a name?”

Her mouth twitched. “Supposedly. He’s Tom’s agent. He says Tom told him and he...well…” Finally her seemingly unflappable composure wavered and a blush tinted her dusky cheeks dark red. “He had a picture,” she murmured, glancing at Harry through her eyelashes then quickly away.

“Right,” Harry said blankly. He was still trying to figure out why Riddle’s agent would know aobut him and Riddle, or why he’d have  _ the picture _ , unless…

“So you know about the text I got, too.”

“The  _ blackmail _ ,” Hermione corrected softly but adamantly. “And yes, I do.”

When Riddle said he’d take care of it, Harry hadn’t imagined that he’d go through so many official channels. Harry hadn’t really imagined anything at all, to be honest. He’d had the naive idea that Riddle would snap his fingers and the problem would disappear. Riddle had that otherworldly energy that made him seem capable of magic, at least at the level of Harry’s subconscious.

“We’re going to figure out who it is,” Hermione said firmly. “I’m only bringing this up at all because I wanted to make sure that everything’s okay, from your point of view.” She looked at Harry earnestly. He was bewildered.

“Okay...how…?” He had the fleeting, absurd thought that she was asking if he was fulfilled in his sex life with Riddle, like Harry and Hermione were best friends and Harry and Riddle were boyfriends. A surreal alternate reality of which he’d just had a brief glimpse.

“He’s not taking advantage of you, is he?” Hermione asked lowly, her face deathly serious.

Tension broken, Harry laughed a little louder than he’d intended, and Hermione jerked back at the sound, like she’d been slapped.

“No, no,” Harry said, sobering himself. “No.”

She relaxed a little. “Okay, then.”

“I mean,” Harry went on, without really deciding to. It was like his mouth just kept moving, words just kept falling from him. “I’ve actually called things off.”

“Oh, well. Okay then. But still, if he’s making you uncomfortable or—” 

“No! I just thought it was the right move. Given the circumstances. And I don’t want to miss a chance because I’m f—hooking up with someone, you know?”

The extra color was back in Hermione’s cheeks, but she nodded calmly.

“All I wanted to say—to be sure you knew—was that you can talk to me freely about any problems you’re having with Riddle or anyone else on the show. Currently and in the future.”

“Thanks.” He meant it. Hermione smiled and nodded. 

“You bet.” She looked urgently at the door, straightening up and hugging herself. “If we’ve got that sorted out, I’d like to go inside now, please.”

Harry would rather have hidden on the balcony the rest of the night, but instead he strode forward to open the door for her.

****

As soon as he was back inside, Harry was overwhelmed again. There was the general knowledge that private homes like this one existed, and then there was seeing one up close. An actual ballroom. Soaring ceilings, banners of ornate hand-painted murals, golden light from a dozen glittering chandeliers, and leagues of the kind of polished self-assured people only extreme wealth could produce.

Someone pulled Hermione away, leaving Harry alone and defenseless. Two women advanced on him immediately. They wore towering black stilettos and long, slinky green dresses and what appeared to be real peacock feathers on a leather thongs around their necks. One had black hair cut into an angular bob, and the other had light brown hair tied up in a chignon and vibrant purple lipstick.

“You’re Harry Potter! I’m Desdemona. This is Champagna.”

“Okay,” Harry said, shaking their hands with a baffled smile. In their shoes, they were an inch and two inches taller than him, respectively. 

“It’s so interesting to meet you,” said Champagna ( _ Champagne-uh _ ) in a deep voice with an accent Harry couldn’t place. “We love you on CLN. And we’ve watched the videos on your sweet little blog as well.”

Champagna had long lacquered nails the same color as her lipstick.

“I’ve been neglecting it,” Harry said. “I’ve gotten a lot of ideas while I’ve been on the show, for making it better.”

They both made low crooning noises the way someone would encourage a child trying to speak its first words. Harry wished he were anywhere else.

A wish that came true, to his distress, when a cool and unmistakable hand landed on his forearm. 

“Harry. There you are. So I see you’ve made friends.” He winked at them. Champagna rolled her eyes exaggeratedly with a long-suffering sigh. Desdemona blushed and toyed with her necklace.

“Here I am,” Harry said senselessly. Hermione’s words were fresh in his mind, and the sight of Riddle, casually touching the small of Harry’s back with his hair more curly than usual, stirred a new emotion in Harry.

Anger.

He stepped out of range of Riddle’s touch. “We’re not friends yet. I still don’t know anything about them but their names.” He tried to look winningly at the two women, who were visibly surprised.

“You don’t?” Champagna asked, her eyes a little wide.

“Well, surely he only knows what he’s  _ read _ .” Riddle’s interjection was smooth. Harry’s irritation ebbed a bit when he saw relief bloom on the two striking and carefully-accentuated faces before him. “What any fan would know. You can’t be  _ friends _ without  _ real _ access.”

Harry had insulted them, he realized now. Or he almost had, but Riddle rescued him. 

That made Harry angrier.

Back at ease, Champagna flashed a dimple. “He looks lovely in our mineral powder, doesn’t he? Harry, have you ever tried highlighter?”

“Oh, a touch of iridescence on those cheekbones—can you imagine?”

Makeup, Harry realized. They were in makeup. Apparently, the makeup Sasha had put on him earlier that day.

Riddle smiled comfortably. “Not quite to Harry’s taste, perhaps?”

Desdemona looked suddenly serious. “Why not try new things, Harry?” She tilted her head so her bangs fell over one of her smoky eyes. “You’d make an adorable spokesperson for our all-day mascara.”

“Um,” Harry began, face heating. Riddle intervened. Again.

“Ah, I’m receiving a very adamant gesture from across the room,” Riddle said with a sage wink. “It looks like Harry is needed on camera.”

“Get in touch with us when you’ve thought it over,” called Desdemona. Champagna wiggled her fingers in a playful wave as Harry let Riddle lead him away, into the shelter of an enormous Christmas tree that almost brushed the towering ceiling.

In its multicolored light, Riddle’s eyes had the illusion of color: a faint, inhuman red. Fitting.

“What’s wrong with you now?” Riddle asked with an edge of impatience. 

“Nothing’s  _ wrong _ with me. If I don’t want to be around you, that’s a choice, not a  _ fault. _ ”

Riddle frowned. “What happened?”

“Nothing! Except  _ you. _ ”

“You weren’t angry before, and now you are. Why?”

Harry presses his lips together, violently frustrated. Then he looked over his shoulder to ensure no one was in earshot and hissed, “You showed the picture.  _ The picture _ . To your agent!”

Riddle looked puzzled. “Yes? He’s a bit of an idiot, but less terrible at his work than most. And I owed his father a favor.”

“That’s—not—I don’t care who your agent is. I care that whomever he is,  _ you showed him. _ ”

Riddle looked sincerely mystified. “What did you think I’d do?”

Harry didn’t have an answer.

“Have the blackmailer found by some seedy fellow in a trench coat? Or an assassin?”

“No,” Harry muttered. “Of course not. Jesus.”

“It was better it was volunteered. Now if it’s revealed to production they can’t fire you for it.”

“They can’t?”

“No,” Riddle said patiently. “Because they can’t fire  _ me _ .”

Harry’s mouth fell open. “You told them it was you?”

Riddle gave a short nod in answer, his glance lingering on Harry’s mouth.

“What if it gets out?”

Riddle looked him in the eye, a small furrow in the smooth spot between his eyes, as though sincerely puzzled. “Then we weather it.”

“We?” Harry echoed slowly.

The furrow deepened before it slowly disappeared. Riddle’s eyes seemed softer. He angled his face down toward Harry’s slightly, and the red glow was replaced by an ordinary, deep brown.

“Harry.” He said Harry’s name in a way Harry hadn’t heard anyone say it before, let alone  _ Riddle _ . “What exactly do you think is going on here?”

Again, Harry had no answer. But this beat of silence felt enormous and meaningful. Riddle grinned, broader than Harry had ever seen. It looked startling—all his white teeth, the brackets of strain beside his mouth, the tiny wrinkle in the bridge of his nose. It looked real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> Harry hadn’t thought he’d ever be in the same bed as Riddle for reasons other than sex. Literally sleeping with Riddle was strange, like having your accountant detail your car. Incongruous.


	16. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I'm going to make up for missing Friday at this rate, soooo that means the fic will either be 25 chapters, or I'll finish it on the 25th. It just depends on if I can actually get a day ahead, as I'd planned, or if I continue just writing madly the day of, my current and highly stressful approach. Thank you guys for reading and dropping comments. I'm behind on replies but please know I cherish each one I receive, as well as your kudos and bookmarks. <3

Hermione was pretty sure that Riddle’s stunt had cost her years of her life.

The only reason she could forgive him disrupting the show so much a  _ second _ time was becuase his first intervention had been such a success, in hindsight. Harry was much more enigmatic than the poor guy they’d crossed off their list at the last minute, and the dichotomy between his design philosophies and Riddle’s had created a strange antagonistic chemistry that was fascinating to watch.

But still, packing up set to another  _ state _ on six hours’ notice?

Neville had cheerfully agreed to the budget increase, pointing out that Riddle was donating the use of the venue, so in a way, they were saving money.

“It’s free advertising for his ridiculous venue,” Hermione couldn’t help pointing out, not quite under her breath. Neville had smiled at her with that patient benevolence that made it impossible to get mad at him, even when he was doing something this ridiculous and contributing to a spike in Hermione’s already record-setting stress levels.

“Look at it like this, Hermione,” Neville had said earnestly, “it’s an opportunity to make the show even better!”

Pithy though it was, Neville’s advice was also correct. There was nothing better in live television than a surprise; and this one, Hermione and her producers hadn’t even had to stage.

And just when she was near her breaking point, Draco Malfoy passed her another of Riddle’s curve balls.

Hermione couldn’t look directly at the photograph without blushing. She closed the screen as soon as she realized what she was looking at, caught Draco’s smirk when she looked up at him, and then had to brace herself before opening it a second time and studying it with professional detachment. Or, her closest approximation. They were in Hermione’s trailer, which she’d originally organized in careful segments: one sleeping area (bed, nightstand, with a freestanding curtain separating them from the rest of the space); leisure area (armchair, lap table, storage ottoman); work area (desk, rolling chair). But everything had become a work space as she tried to organize the chaos that decamping to the Cape entailed. Particularly because Hermione was expected to wear evening dress to the party, so three gowns the stylist she’d borrowed from the show were draped over the bed and her luggage was open on the armchair. Her desk was heaped with notebooks and files that had once been perfectly organized but now made her wince when she accidentally glanced their way.

She did  _ not _ have time for this.

Harry Potter having sex in plain view of the public on his project site for her show. Fantastic. Hermione took a deep breath, eyed Draco where he sat in her desk chair, pivoting it slightly to and fro as though bored, and asked her first question. “Why are  _ you _ bringing me this?” 

Draco pressed his lips together. “Well, it isn’t because I represent Harry Potter, is it?”

Hermione worked in live television. She was hard to shock. Harry Potter sneaking some man on set— or hell, picking up a member of production or the crew, or even another contestant— that wouldn’t have shocked her, even if the location of the tryst was nontraditional to say the least. But what Draco was implying…

She snorted, looked at him sidelong. “You’re full of it.”

“I wish I was,” Draco mumbled. “It’s him. He told me to get it taken care of.”

Well, this explained why Riddle wanted Harry cast. Getting a boyfriend or girlfriend a leg up on one of your projects was disturbingly common in the business, though Hermione tried to avoid facilitating that kind of favoritism whenever she could. It was rarely good for the project and audiences hated it when they found out. Normally though, she saw this sort of thing coming, and this time she really hadn’t.

“Shit.”

“One of those rare moments when we’re in perfect accord, Granger,” said Draco on a long sigh.

Hermione looked at the text messages Harry had received too. “Blackmail. I thought I’d seen everything.”

“Well, you’re still young,” Draco said encouragingly. “What are you going to do?”

Hermione glanced up at him. “Is it any of  _ your _ business?”

Draco got splotchy. “I just told you, Granger. My client told me to take care of it.”

“Well, then, what are  _ you _ going to do?”

Draco got splotchier and jumped up from the chair. “I came to you! It’s logical. You’re in the best position to figure out who it could be, because you know who had access to the project sites.”

“I know who was  _ allowed _ access,” Hermione corrected. “I don’t know who broke the rules and went anyway. And I don’t know who among the general public could have snuck out there without being seen. It probably wouldn’t be hard. Look,” she added, pointing toward her luggage, the gowns. “There’s no time for this right now.”

Draco crossed his arms. “It’s as important as anything else.”

“No,” Hermione said as calmly as she could manage. “It could be nothing. It could be a prank. You know what isn’t a prank? The show going live at nine tomorrow night on an  _ island _ your client ordered us to with twenty-four hours’ notice. Get out of here, Draco. I’ll text you later.”

Draco scowled, but when he opened his mouth to argue and Hermione glowered at him, he wisely shut it again and left without saying anything else. She leaned against the door after it closed behind him and rubbed her face. Then she pounded her fists against it several times and groaned. A groan which became a yell, growing into a sharp cry that was so loud it made Hermione’s own ears ring.

She felt a little better.

Riddle was supposed to be the ultimate professional. A sure thing. Locking him into the special was supposed to make everything easy, make Hermione’s career. 

And instead of everything that was  _ supposed _ to be, she was here, with not one but three potential disasters. She rubbed her face again, and her phone chimed.

She picked it up and looked at it, fighting the impulse to throw it at the wall. 

**RW: You okay? Someone texted me that you made a sound like you were being murdered** .

Hermione smirked and texted back with swift thumbs.

**Hermione: Nice of them to check on me to make sure that wasn’t the case.**

**RW: I’m sure they trusted you to fend off any attacker. Want me to stop by?**

Hermione hesitated, then sent the message she wanted to send.

**Hermione: Yeah, that’d be nice** .

Having Ron around was like plugging into a reserve battery. He didn’t even have to do or say anything, just be near, breathing in his steady way, shooting her fond little smiles.

Ron Weasley was so far from the sort of person Hermione normally took an interest in that she still hadn’t come to terms with her own attachment to him. And they had begun with such deliberate casualness, that she had no idea whether his feelings were evolving, too, or if it was just her, inconveniently wanting more than late night hookups and flirtatious text messages.

She closed her luggage, pulled the curtain closed around the bed to hide the gowns, and straightened up her desk before the light knock at the door that announced Ron. Hermione let him in and he ducked inside quickly with a wry smile, the hood on his sweatshirt up as though that would disguise him when he was taller than ninety-nine percent of humanity and wore  _ Team Potter _ green.

They wound up close together, which gave Hermione a little thrill. Ron paused for just a moment, then leaned down to hug her. She loved the way she felt when they stood facing one another this way: pleasantly engulfed. He smelled like cheap champagne and sawdust. As their embrace lengthened, her pulse slowed down to a healthy rate for the first time in two days.

At last Hermione pulled back, reluctant. “I have to pack. And pick a dress. And figure out what to do about your contestant hooking up with Tom Riddle.”

She shouldn’t have told him, but there were a lot of “shouldn’ts” she’d been ignoring where Ron was concerned. What was one more?

He looked at her in the same way she imagined she’d looked at Draco a few minutes earlier. “You’re...no way. No way!”

“Yep,” Hermione said, so delirious that she laughed as she said it, leaning back against Ron’s arms so he held a chunk of her weight and looking up at him expectantly. “So, what should I do?”

“Way above my paygrade,” Ron said, still looking pale with shock. “Are you  _ sure _ ?”

“Yep.”

Ron shook his head slowly, tightening the circle of his arms again so she wound up closer again, putting her cheek on his chest with a sigh.

  
“ _ Way _ above my paygrade,” Ron said again, definitely, “but I’m told I’ve got great taste in evening gowns.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> "What about a low platform? I've seen some really interesting designs where the bed is basically a part of the floor. And the room is big enough for it."
> 
> Harry nodded thoughtfully at Lavender's suggestion, trying to figure out how to say no without revealing his only reason: the platform she was talking about would be too low for Riddle to properly bend Harry over it.


	17. The Master Bedroom, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh I'm late. I took some of the advice from the comments and gave myself a break yesterday. But I'm going to try to update twice today, so hurray for that! 
> 
> I can't tell you guys how much fun it is to read your thoughts and see your kudos. It's a big holiday gift from you to me and I thank you for it.

Harry returned to work strangely energized. It probably had something to do with the surreality of knowing that at least for the time being, Tom Riddle wanted to  _ get to know him _ . And not just in the fucking-him-in-every-room of the project way. (Though luckily, he meant that way also.)

Harry hadn’t really grown up entertaining many childish fantasies. Or if he had, they’d mostly revolved around minor sorts of luxuries, like kindness from the relatives he told himself he didn’t need or having clothes and book bags that didn’t make other kids stare and wrinkle their noses. But if he’d had a different kind of childhood then he could have imagined this as a teenage daydream, the silly child’s belief that an older, better-looking, more sophisticated  _ celebrity _ would take some sort of romantic interest in them. Wasn’t that basically the plot of every bestselling romance?

Harry was too grown up to fully buy that Riddle’s interest, though by all appearances sincere, would last past the end of production. But he was willing to enjoy it while it lasted.

Well, he’d enjoy it later. Right now he had a master bedroom to make over.

They’d pulled up ratty carpet and cheered when they discovered incredibly well-preserved hardwood beneath. Lavender actually sank to her knees to run her hands over its glossy surface, the wood burnished in the way only old wood under good old stain ever looked.

“The fuck, did they wax them right before the carpet went down? They’re  _ perfect _ .”

Harry had hoped to spend some of the day reviving floors like the ones in the living room. Given the gift of floors that needed very little work aside from patching where the tack strip nails had left small holes, he felt a flash of excitement at the idea that for once, they had  _ extra _ time and could do  _ more _ than the design called for, rather than just hoping to get through most of it.

“Let’s add a built in dresser in the sitting area,” he blurted before he could talk himself out of it.

The crew looked at him in amazement. “Are you a carpenter, and you failed to tell us?” George crossed his arms. “Because none of us are.”

Harry shook his head, unable to stop a grin from growing on his face with excitement at the trick he was about to show them. “No need. There’s a dresser in the shop, a really gorgeous one, and we still have plenty of money left in our budget.”

Fred’s eyes got wider and his smile sparked as he realized what Harry had in mind. “You’re going to insert the dresser?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “It’ll be great.”

“Oh, actually, I’ve heard of that,” Seamus chimed in. “Sweet. I’ve always wanted to see someone do it.”

Harry hesitated. “Yeah, me too.”

Again, the crew stared at him.

“Are you  _ kidding _ ? You want to run an  _ experiment _ in the terrifyingly small window of time we have?” Lavender put her hands on her hips. Harry had realized that she had even sharper edges than he’d realized at first but the more comfortable she got around Harry the harder they were to overlook.

“It’s not an experiment,” Harry sniffed. “I’ve...seen plenty of YouTube videos. I’ve practically apprenticed in it.”

Ron grinned. “Yeah, an online class.”

“But,” Harry added, grinning back, “I’m not good at the delicate drywall work. So I’m hoping…?”

Ron’s grin shone broader. “That I’ll do it? Of course. Piece of cake.”

Harry turned his smile back on the other crewmembers, who all looked dubious, but none more than Lavender who continued to outright glare. 

Lavender rolled her eyes and plucked her phone from her pocket. “Give me the keywords on YouTube, please.”

***

They cut away the drywall and encountered their first problem.

“ _ What _ is ductwork doing here?” Ron asked suspiciously, like they’d discovered a nefarious surveillance system and not some half-collapsed tin tubing extending down the wall and around a corner out of sight of the highest-powered flashlights.

“Okay,” Harry said, breathing in through his nose. He studied the mangled drywall with trepidation. The cameras had shown up just in time again; one was panning the torn-up wall and another was fixed on Harry’s face to capture his every reaction.

Before he could get annoyed, Harry squinted at the face on the other side and managed a brief half-smile. “Hey, Gary.”

_ Hey Harry _ , Gary mouthed back.

Dean patted Harry’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Harry. We can get it all put back before tomorrow. It’ll have plenty of time.”

Harry shook his head. “No, I think we should try to scope the ductwork and see if it’s active. I bet it’s part of an old system, and if it is we can cut it out.”

“Harry, are you sure…?” Seamus began slowly.

“Yeah, we’ve got time. We don’t need to be putting it back until tomorrow morning at the latest, do we?”

“That’s right!” Ron agreed. “‘Specially if you and Lavender move on to staging. We won’t be able to move everything in yet, but you could at least get a headstart by planning the layout and picking the pieces.”

Harry smiled gratefully at Ron. “Yeah. Lav?”

She set down her flashlight and dusted her hands off on her overalls. “Well, we definitely can’t let you go choose furniture by yourself.”

***

An hour later Harry was really wishing he’d come to the shop alone. None of the bed frames were right, which Lavender had fixated on, but Harry kept losing his train of thought when he tried to focus on the beds at all.

After they’d wasted twenty minutes looking at everything twice and hating it all just as much the second time, Lavender looked thoughtfully at Harry.

"What about a low platform? I've seen some really interesting designs where the bed is basically a part of the floor. And the room is big enough for it."

Harry nodded mutely at Lavender's suggestion, trying to figure out how to say no without revealing his only reason: the platform she was talking about would be too low for Riddle to properly bend Harry over it.

Encouraged, Lavender linked their arms so she could tow him toward the end of the shop that was the dedicated lumberyard.

“If we get some carpenter-grade plywood, we could stain it to match the floor. Wouldn’t that look pretty?”

“Um,” Harry said, telling himself sternly that this was a  _ good _ idea. Lavender had  _ good _ ideas and this was one of them. None of the other furniture would work right in the room, even if a couple of them would work  _ just right _ for…

As he let Lavender drag him past plumbing supplies, Harry caught sight of a bin of eight-foot sticks of copper electrical conduit and ground to a halt.

“Um, the fuck?” Lavender wondered aloud. “Are you already thinking about the bathroom? Don’t get ahead of yourself, Potter. Remember we left a gaping hole in the wall of that bedroom.”

“I...yeah, I know.” Harry managed, flustered. He shook off Lavender so he could pull a stick from the bin. It was cold in his hand, heavy. “Maybe we could use some of it to build a headboard too. And, um, a footboard.”

Lavender’s irritation disappeared and her look became speculative. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. Industrial. Reclaimed materials. It would tie in great with that bench I thought you were crazy to drag up from the basement.”

Harry blinked at her, beginning to smile as she busily picked up an armload of materials, including a few fittings and flanges.

“ _ Thought _ , past tense?”

She glared up at him. “Focus, Potter. Get a few more of these.” She nudged a bucket of connectors with her toe.

“But like, you know what this means,” Harry insisted, grinning. “That I was right about the bench. I mean, you already said it, more or less. Maybe it would make you feel better to  _ really _ say it, out loud. ‘You were right, Harry.’”

Lavender’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Shut up, Potter.” She dumped most of what she was carrying into his arms and the combined weight, unexpected, made him stagger and laugh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry shyly held out the rope he’d found, soft but without much stretch, warm from being coiled in his pocket.
> 
> Riddle took it, testing it between his hands with clinical interest. When he looped it around either palm then pulled, the muscles in his forearms hardening with force, Harry felt a little dizzy.


	18. The Master Bedroom, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to eke this out but I fell asleep twice so if it's weird that's why. XD
> 
> Also, we didn't quite reach the smut! I'm so sorry. Other stuff just happened.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!

**Monday, 3 p.m., twenty-nine hours until live judging**   
  
“Great news!” Seamus called, sticking his head out of the door as Harry and Lavender came up the walk. “The duct work  _ is _ old and  _ can _ come out.”

Harry started to smile, then stopped, because Seamus didn’t look at all like someone sharing good news. “Then why do you have that look on your face?”

Seamus sighed. “I sort of...dropped the scope. Into the wall. We got pushed out of the site while the guys production called get it back out.”

Harry felt a thrill of anxiety and tamped it back down. “It’ll be fine. We’ve got, what, twenty-four hours? It’ll be fine.”

***

**Tuesday, 6 a.m., thirteen hours until live judging**

Harry hadn’t slept and things weren’t fine.

They’d pulled an all-nighter on the project, to the producers’ distress. Something about live television regulations and treatment of actors--Harry had to sign a few forms and the crew was only allowed to help him in shifts.

The shop opened at six and Harry was the first one in line. He’d half convinced himself the dresser would be gone, but it was still there, tucked in the back where he and Lavender had found it the day they were working on the kitchen and looking for a freestanding cabinet.

While the guys from production carted it out, Harry wandered after them, half-dazed, wondering if they could pull off the cabinet at this point and still get the furniture in. But he also knew that the audience would be disappointed if they gave up on building in the dresser, so last night when Dean had, again, tentatively suggested closing the wall so they could begin staging, Harry couldn’t bring himself to back down.

Now he was wondering what the fuck he’d been thinking. Wondering, while distantly thinking about sending a quick message to Riddle. He hadn’t texted Harry, but he  _ had _ given Harry his number, in a roundabout way. Did that mean the ball was in Harry’s court?

He also hadn’t forgotten what he’d seen in the box beneath Riddle’s bed, the one he’d found when he’d dropped his phone, then reached beneath the edge of the bed to retrieve it.

Harry’s cheeks heated up just at the memory, and though he was tired as hell, there was an unignorable stirring from his cock that made Harry wonder exasperatedly if Riddle reduced everyone he fucked to a teenager’s level of constant horniness, or if it was just Harry.

_ Maybe there’s an online support group somewhere _ , he thought, exhausted to the point of hysteria. 

Then, walking after the production crew toward loadout, Harry saw the spools of rope, rowed up along the back wall in the hardware section. They  _ definitely _ made him think about Riddle’s box. Harry stopped to stare, his gaze skating over the different cords and types, all tightly wound on their reels.

“Harry,” called one of the production guys, making him jump, like he’d been caught watching porn. But when he swung around to look, the guy was just looking over his shoulder casually as he helped his partner cart the dresser toward loadout. “Want a ride back with us in the truck?’ 

“Er,” Harry replied, his voice a little high. “I’m, um, going to grab a couple more things. I’ll get another ride.”

“Sure thing! Don’t take too long. We’ll need your help with placement.”

“Oh, no, actually. You can ask the crew.”

“Someone in particular?”

Harry laughed, shaking his head. “Any of them. They all know exactly where it goes.”

***

Harry didn’t find a ride, though. He had to walk to the project site. He was halfway there, hurrying down a sidewalk dusted with snow from the evening before, when his phone buzzed.

He didn’t think it would be Riddle, but that’s who he was hoping for when he stopped, got his phone out and looked at the screen. 

It wasn’t Riddle.

**Unknown Number: I’ll accept payment via wire transfer between now and midnight tomorrow night. The routing information is on the backside of a sticky note on the door of your trailer. Reply within three minutes to confirm receipt.**

Harry froze. He hadn’t been told what to do if he got additional messages. In hindsight, of course he should have asked. 

Also, there was a fact he hadn’t missed. Whomever it was had sufficient access to the site village, they’d left a note on his door. The reminder that the blackmailer was close gave Harry a chill and made him look, paranoid, at the streets surrounding him and wish he hadn’t isolated himself by walking over.

And what reply should he send? He thought of calling Riddle, but that didn’t make sense. He had another number in his phone history that he scrolled to and called before he could change his mind.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Hermione?” Harry felt suddenly awkward. How to put it into words? “I’m so sorry to be calling. But you know that, um, text message I got, before?” He was wincing at being reminded, and reminding her, that she’d seen it. 

He heard her softly clear her throat, but her tone was composed when she said, “Yes. I do.” Then she sounded a little more intent when she added, “Did something else happen?”

Harry was relieved that she’d made the deduction. “Yes. I got another message with instructions, I guess? And they want me to text them back.”

“What exactly did the message say?” Hermione sounded calm, controlled. It comforted Harry and he held the screen in front of his face and read the message to her, enunciating each word. “That was about two minutes ago,” he added.

“Send back a message that just says ‘received.’ I’ll get back with you as we work on it. Obviously, I don’t want you to send this person any money, but we will let you get the note off your door just in case someone’s watching. Be subtle, but protect the paper from your fingerprints by using your sleeve. I’ll have maintenance leave a plastic container on your desk that you can set it in.”

Harry was dazed. “Is this…? Are you actually with the FBI?”

Hermione gave a short laugh. “Well, it isn’t the first time there’s been some kind of a crime on set.”

“ _ Seriously _ ?”

“These are standard measures for collecting evidence when investigators are planning a STING intervention.”

“Are you...are you fucking with me?” Harry demanded.

She laughed again, clearer and easier. “Only a little. But not about the past crimes thing. This business is kind of ridiculous.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Can you get to your trailer and pick up the note in the next five minutes? I can get a maintenance person in and out in about three. They’ll pose it as a towel replacement.”

Harry shook his head. “You’re kind of unbelievable.”

Hermione’s laugh this time had an edge of surprise. “I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are,” Harry assured her. He looked back the way he’d come. The set village was still in sight. “I can be there in five minutes.”

“Great. Let me know if you get another message, and continue not to talk about this with anyone else. Except Tom and Draco, clearly. But beyond them, we don’t know who might be involved, and it’s better if they don’t realize you’ve told someone.”

“Okay, yeah,” Harry agreed. “Thanks, Hermione.”

“Just doing my job,” she said flippantly, then paused. “Sort of.”

***

**12 p.m., eight hours until live judging**

Harry finally got back inside the project site for the first time that day after two producer interviews interspersed and being redirected for the headshots they’d use if he wound up as a finalist, all while waiting for his blackmailer to send him an angry text when they inevitably found out that Hermione had set the  _ actual FBI _ on them, as Harry had learned earlier when a nice investigator named Brad had called to ask him a few questions.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Lavender said by way of greeting, meeting him at the door. “Did you forget that none of us have done this before?”

“But we watched all the same YouTube videos,” Harry offered, but Lavender wasn’t receptive to his joke. He followed her into the bedroom where the crew had obviously tried to make as much progress as possible without actually committing to attaching the dresser to the studs. It was still messy, but the sight of the dresser there in the space made Harry feel a thrill of excitement the way he always did when he could imagine the finished product with perfect clarity, and it looked even better than he’d hoped.

“Hey, give me that,” he said, reaching out to take the drill from Dean. “This is going to be quick. Just wait.”

***

**3 p.m., five hours until live judging**

The dresser was in, and the bottom drawer wouldn’t open. It was bolted to the stud along with the rear support. 

“Fuck.”

“No one is going to know,” Lavender murmured, looking over her shoulder just to confirm a camera crew hadn’t snuck into the house without anyone noticing. Production was still spread too thin to film every project all the time, and anyway most of the footage for the day had been taken and was being packaged for the broadcast. 

“ _ I’ll _ know,” Harry said, withholding the urge to give the drawer a petulant kick and make everything worse.

“Let’s make a deal,” Ron began slowly, like Harry was a nervous horse that could spook. “We’ll definitely fix it. Hopefully before tonight. But we’ll get everything else done in here first, and if we run out of time, we’ll fix it tomorrow.”

Harry knew his frustration was irrational, but he couldn’t help it. Leaving the drawer nonfunctioning felt like cheating. Part of the challenge, after all, was the time constraint.

“I…” He looked around at the crew and felt a wave of guilt when he saw how tired they all looked. He’d kept them awake, too, insisting they build in a dresser that didn’t need to be built in. And they’d shared in his stress, waiting around for him to get back all morning. He swallowed. “Okay, deal.”

“Thank fuck,” Lavender said over the group’s collective sigh. “Let’s get the furniture in here. Harry is being weirdly particular about the bed and I want to make sure it’s up to his standards before Sasha steals him.”

***

**7:55 p.m., five minutes until live judging**

“Okay, yes, I am a miracle worker and you look beautiful,” Sasha declared, twisting his fingers through Harry’s hair to make the parts that tended to stand up form neat waves instead. 

“Hey,” Harry said, vaguely realizing he’d just been insulted.

“Not that you’re not beautiful all the time, darling,” Sasha revised calmly, with an exaggerated wink. His own hair was coiled up into a smooth bun on top of his head and he was wearing a stud in his right ear in the shape of a wrapped present with a bow.

“Yeah, thanks,” Harry said wryly, wringing his hands in his lap. “So you’re done? Because I’ve really got to…”

“Go, yes, go,” Sasha said, waving him off. Harry got up from his chair, out from under the lights in the production station set up on the curb, and joined Violet to walk quickly up the sidewalk and into the project. She was listening to something in her headset and barely glanced up at him as they moved.

“Okay,” she said when they’d stopped at the bedroom door. “They just finished at Covingtons and cut to commercial, so they’ll be here in about three minutes with a live feed. You’re ready?”

They’d had the same conversation, more or less, before the first two shoots too, and a few terse asides at the party. This felt different. Harry was invested now; he couldn’t deny it. He was over the thrill of “just being there”; his competitive urge had kicked in; and most centrally, he didn’t want to outvoted and have to pack up and leave.

“Ready.”

She smiled, gave him a double thumbs up, and stepped out of the shot just as Harry heard the front door open and a murmur of voices from the foyer.

“Hey, Mo,” he said to the cameraman who was adjusting the tilt on his camera. 

“Hey Harry! Looking good. I like the hair! Very...swirly!”

Harry was still laughing softly when Riddle came into sight.

He looked the same as usual: perfect, immaculately dressed, his hair sculpted into soft waves that would make Harry’s look dismal in contrast despite Sasha’s best efforts.

Francesca, the host, flanked Riddle. She looked like the sort of person he should be fucking. In fact, they looked like the sort of pair that would be cast as romantic leads in a blockbuster film. Tall, classically lovely, their faces all sharp angles and perfect complexion. Her hair was a shade lighter than Tom’s but still, they were practically a matched set.

“Three, two, one, and we’re live!”

Harry tried to adjust his expression into one that wouldn’t make him look either jealous or constipated, settling on a too-bright smile. Mo, bless him, hastily panned away to Riddle and Francesca.

“Here we are at stop number four,” said Francesca brightly. “Harry Potter’s cozy bungalow, which we last saw from the point of view of its grand prize-winning kitchen! Harry, are you ready to show us the bedroom you’ve been working on this week?”

It was easier when he avoided Riddle’s eye altogether. Harry’s smile was much less forced as he nodded.

“Yeah, come on in.” He pushed open the door and gestured for them to precede him. The cameras rolled in too and went to their predetermined positions around the room, which had also already been prepped with more lighting.

Harry took a deep breath for strength and followed them in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> When Riddle had Harry arranged how he liked, he reached at last for his belt buckle. Harry jumped at the sound the leather made as Riddle yanked it from his body with a snap. Then the button and fly of his jeans, the soft fine cotton of his briefs, and _then_ Harry was face to face with just Riddle, breathing him in, unable to move as the claustrophobia set in, quick and jarring from his being effectively trapped between the wall behind him and Riddle's body in front of him and the sharp, up-close smell of Riddle's body, his quickly-fattening cock, the faint trail of hair below his navel.
> 
> "Don't make me wait," Riddle directed firmly, putting his thumb in the corner of Harry's mouth as though if Harry refused to open it of his own accord, Riddle would pry his lips apart.


	19. The Master Bedroom, Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey you guys! The end is in sight! Remember I can take reasonable requests in the comments as I’m posting as I write. Meaning there’s still time for me to include what you want to read. I so appreciate the feedback you’re leaving me! ❤️❤️❤️

Francesca stood in the center of the bedroom and did a slow pivot, looking around with a wondering expression, like she hadn’t seen stills of the project an hour before while a producer prepped her.

Riddle, though, hadn’t been prepped, according to Lavender, who had become Harry’s source for all questions production-related by virtue of sleeping with a producer (and unlike Ron not keeping it a secret).

Harry watched, trying not to fidget, as Riddle’s dark stare took in the crown molding Harry had added that matched the trim. He’d also painted it, since it was raw oak and he had no hope of matching the patina on the original woodwork. Harry braced himself for a rebuke, but none came. Riddle just strolled around casually while Francesca babbled.

“The most traditional space on your project yet,” she said. “Now one thing we know you struggled with, Harry, was the decision to create a built-in dresser here in the sitting area. Do you want to talk about that?”

“Sure,” Harry said, feeling Riddle’s eyes on him but not allowing himself to look in that direction. “The house has a lot of features like that, so adding something that would be true to the house’s personality, and also serve a function, felt like the right choice.”

“And this dresser was pre-built, is that right? You didn’t have a master carpenter come in and build you custom dovetailed drawers?”

Harry smiled. “No. We bought the dresser as a freestanding piece of furniture, removed the legs and cut out the drywall so that the cabinet could be recessed into the wall. That means the drawers are a lot deeper than they look.” Mention of the drawers had Harry’s throat closing up with sudden dread.

Riddle was watching him sharply as Francesca nodded, enthused. “Should we have a look?’ she asked Riddle.

Harry’s heart felt like it was going to break through his ribcage. But all he could do was stand there, helpless, while Riddle obligingly bent and reached for the bottom drawer to test its depth.

But though his hand brushed the drawer pull for the bottom drawer, the one that wouldn’t open because the crew had run out of time today to fix it—he didn’t pull fruitlessly on it and humiliate Harry on live television. As though he  _ knew _ , he made a little adjustment to his posture that seemed very natural and brought his reaching hand level with the middle drawer instead.

It pulled open with the soft purr of wood on wood, generously wide and deep.

“Oh, wow,” Francesca said approvingly. “That’s just beautiful, Harry, and so useful too. That’s a trend with you, isn’t it? Trying to create a home that can be easily lived in.”

Harry was surprised to hear it put into words quite like that, but it sounded right. He smiled at her reflexively. “Exactly.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he was sure he saw Riddle reach out with a toe and bump the bottom drawer of the built-in as he turned around to study the rest of the room.

“I for one love what you’ve done here,” Francesca said, looking sincere. She rested her hand on the piece of conduit that was running over the top of the footboard. “The industrial details are a great touch and callback to your design choices elsewhere in the house.”

Harry smiled and nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Francesca.”

She smiled back and then turned to Riddle. “Well, Tom? My opinion doesn’t mean much, but yours…?”

“It’s…” Riddle scanned the room with his eyes again, looking resigned. “I suppose it’s well thought out. He had a great space to work with, given the attached sitting room. The built-in was a clever choice.”

Compared to what Riddle had said in past comments, Harry was shocked by the relative positiveness of what he’d just heard.

“Oh, look at you two,” Francesca crooned. “That trip did wonders for your mutual respect, didn’t it?”

Harry did not allow his expression to change, though he summoned a strained smile to echo Riddle’s easy, dismissive laugh. “I’ve always respected Mr. Potter,” he said smoothly. “But now I’m coming to like him as well.”

***

Harry was back at the project site at 11:15, his hair still sweet-smelling from a shower and his best efforts to blow it dry, which bore results not at all like Sasha’s yet still an improvement over Harry’s grooming attempts in all the years of his life leading up to the preliminary round.

He was prepared to wait for Riddle, but Riddle was already there.

He was standing in the bedroom in front of the built-in with his hands on his hips. He gave Harry a stern look.

“Anything you want to explain?”

Harry started to shake his head, then reconsidered. Still, he thought for a long few moments before he began nodding instead.

“The bottom drawer isn’t functioning. Yet.”

“Oh, I know that,” Riddle said with a knowing little smile. What interests me is whatever it is you’re clinging to in your pocket.”

Harry froze. He hadn’t even realized it before Riddle pointed it out, but now he was aware of his hand clutching the rope in his pocket like a talisman.

Harry shyly held out the rope he’d chosen at the shop, soft but without much stretch, warm from being coiled in his pocket.

Riddle took it, testing it between his hands with clinical interest. When he looped it around either palm then pulled, the muscles in his forearms hardening with force, Harry felt a little dizzy.

Riddle must have heard the hitch in Harry’s breathing, because he looked at Harry through his lashes, a quirk of his lips betraying his amusement for a moment before he looked stern again.

“Has anyone tied you before?”

The way he said it, the way he held the rope, was all the evidence Harry needed that Riddle had done this sort of thing before. He would have known in that moment, even if he hadn’t already suspected from encountering the box.

Harry shook his head.

Riddle tilted his head, quizzical, methodically winding then unwinding the binding around his hands in a way that Harry found hypnotizing. Riddle’s thumbs were strong and square, his fingers tapered and elegant, but dizzyingly long. They’d easily be able to reach deep into Harry, if…

“Answer out loud,” Riddle instructed coolly.

“N-no.”

Riddle didn’t seem surprised, but he was visibly pleased, his smile lingering another moment this time before it disappeared again.

“Go kneel in front of the dresser.”

Harry went, barely feeling his body as he rushed across the room, half-tumbling into the requested position while Riddle followed with long, measured steps and stood in front of him again. 

“Give me your hands. Wrists together.”

Harry hesitated, then lifted his arms, wrists touching, just above his head. Riddle took hold of him, looping the already doubled cord around Harry’s wrists twice so that four smooth rows of the soft fiber pressed his wrists together more snugly. Riddle then wove the tail of the rope between Harry’s wrists, manipulated it some way below Harry’s hands and out of his sight, then pulled on the trailing ends now dangling below Harry’s hands experimentally.

He swept his thumb over the skin on the back of Harry’s hand above the binding, then his forearm beneath, testing for tautness. He did all of it with a detached air. Harry had knelt so close to the dresser that his feet were pressed against it, but after he’d tied Harry, Riddle shuffled closer, forcing Harry’s upper body back until he felt the position strain his thighs. 

When Riddle had Harry arranged how he liked, he reached at last for his belt buckle. Harry jumped at the sound the leather made as Riddle yanked it from his body with a snap. Then he loosened the button and fly of his jeans, pushed down the soft fine cotton of his briefs, and  _ then _ Harry was face to face with just Riddle, breathing him in, unable to move. Claustrophobia set in, quick and jarring from his being effectively trapped between the dresser behind him and Riddle's body in front of him and the sharp, up-close smell of Riddle's body, his quickly-fattening cock, the faint trail of hair below his navel.

"Don't make me wait," Riddle directed firmly, putting his thumb in the corner of Harry's mouth as though if Harry refused to open it of his own accord, Riddle would pry his lips apart.

Harry impulsively tried to separate his wrists, shoved down between them and snugly bound, and straining against them brought on another rush of purely physical, heady panic. He didn’t open his mouth.

Riddle made good on his implicit threat and those strong, smooth fingers pried him open while with his other hand Riddle guided his cock into Harry’s mouth.

It wasn’t like the living room, when Riddle had sat there, so still and almost unresponsive, his hand in Harry’s hair. This time Harry was no more than a vessel, a hot wet space Riddle sank into so fast Harry gagged, breathing in short, insufficient sniffs through his nose. When he instinctively pulled back, Riddle leaned after him, unrelenting, so that when Harry’s head hit the dresser drawer behind him Riddle had all the leverage he needed to push in deeper, closing off any escape and leaving Harry choking and unbreathing, Riddle’s gentle thumb on his gum a reminder not to bite down.

Closing his streaming eyes, Harry fought another few seconds, legs jerking helplessly under him, resisting his bound wrists til his shoulders ached, before he finally got himself under control and willed his entire body still.

In reward, Riddle eased back so that Harry could pant around his cock, mouth still wide open, just the head inside, saliva trailing down his chin. Harry managed to open his eyes and look up at Riddle, whose dark eyes bore down approvingly. He only had another moment’s rest though before Riddle began again.

In and out, bottoming out for long moments until Harry couldn’t help twitching and whining, sometimes sobbing a little as Riddle drew out though he knew it was a waste of breath. It went on until Harry couldn’t feel his sore throat, didn’t stir when he lost his air, became heedless of the drool setting his face and keeping Riddle’s cock slick. He lost the strength in his trembling legs at some point, but when he was sitting on his heels Riddle just braced his hands over Harry’s head on the edge of the built in, bent his knees and kept easing in and out, too slow to be called thrusting and too unyielding to be called gentle.

He came without warning when he was so deep in Harry’s throat Harry hardly had to swallow, his reflex to gag or cough was forgotten. Then he tucked himself into his pants, picked Harry up under the arms and put him in the bed.

Harry was too unaware of his body to know if he was hard at this point or not, but he felt sensitized in every cell, whimpering as Riddle stretched out beside him on the neatly made bed and cupped one hand over Harry’s throat, like his touch could heal.

“I’m not quite done with you yet,” he murmured, reaching for the slack in the rope beneath Harry’s hands and grasping it, pulled Harry’s aching arms over his head, the new position straining his sore upper body in new ways. But his natural inclination to resist had been beaten back by the face-fucking to such an extent Harry, wincing, didn’t fight Riddle as he secured him to the headboard then knelt between Harry’s splayed legs. “Poking around beneath my bed. Nailing closed drawers.” He rubbed his hand firmly between Harry’s thighs and yes, actually, Harry was quite hard. Riddle’s grin was salacious as his touch disappeared much too soon. Harry’s hips thrusts feebly, but Riddle didn’t touch him again, just folded his arms and studied his prone body thoughtfully. “You’re headstrong. You know I like that. But misbehavior can have consequences.”

He bent forward to reach up and cup Harry’s jaw, brushing his lower lip which had to be red and swollen, and which felt intensely sensitive. Harry thought he could feel every ring in Tom’s thumbprint.

“But you were also very good before. And good behavior should yield rewards.”

Harry’s cock twitched hopefully.

“I know why you put these convenient accent railings on this bed, Harry. You hoped I’d tie you up, just like this, and fuck you. Didn’t you?”

Harry felt a very faint flare of stubbornness, and firmed his jaw, unspeaking.

Riddle chuckled darkly, running his hand from Harry’s face down his body, circling his navel, unnervingly near Harry’s straining cock but not near enough. Harry’s hips stuttered again.

“Answer out loud.”

_ That tone _ . Harry was speaking before he’d decided to. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I wanted you to tie me up and fuck me.” His cheeks burned. “Ever since I saw. The box.”

Riddle’s hand moved swiftly down to rub a firm circle on Harry’s cock through the denim of his jeans. It felt so good that fresh tears burned in the already-raw corners of his eyes. Harry’s head rolled back, taking some of the pressure off his shoulders.

“Good. Good boy. One confidence deserves another, doesn’t it? I’ve wanted to tie you up and fuck you on the day I first saw you.”

Harry’s curiosity was strong enough even to override his fixation on Riddle’s hand, stroking him surely and exquisitely and agonizingly. “Wh-when was that?” he panted.

“Oh, mid-November. Someone happened to be watching one of those amateur videos of yours.” He casually rolled Harry’s t-shirt up his waist, bunched it over his chest. Harry wriggled helpfully until Riddle had access to his chest. Riddle splayed his hand over Harry’s ribs and traced his thumbnail over Harry’s left nipple. “It was in a waiting room, of all places.”

Harry wet his lip, straining against the rope in a way that made his wrists throb and the railing creak. He might have worried it wouldn’t hold if he hadn’t built it himself. As it was he pulled harder still, not trying to get away, but to lever himself up enough that he had a good look at Riddle bending down to lick Harry’s pebbled nipple with a deft dark pink tongue. It was the sight as much as the sensation that had Harry gasping, a tremor running through him in a pounding sensation that centered in his cock, in his tightening balls. He felt, astoundingly, like the next time Riddle happened to brush against him he’d come.

Riddle sat up again, looking down at the bulge in Harry’s jeans with half-lidded eyes. 

“You’re lovelier in person,” he murmured, so quietly Harry almost didn’t hear. His hands ran down Harry’s skinny waist and his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his jeans and underwear, pulling everything down to Harry’s knees in one long, decisive pull. Then he took hold of the cuffs of Harry’s jeans one at a time until Harry only wore the t-shirt, rucked up under his armpits, and the pair of socks he’d put on after the taping right out of the shower. At least they were clean.

Riddle fondled his balls in a way that would have been pleasant if Harry wasn’t already so desperate to come. And if Harry hadn’t realized abruptly that the lights were on and he was totally nude, more or less, Riddle fully clothed and looking at him with the same narrow-eyed focus he had when he was judging the rooms in Harry’s project.

It had been a very long time since Harry had felt so exposed. It made him shudder. It made him harder, somehow.

Riddle, watching his cock jerk, grinned and walked backwards on his knees. His trousers were still open, so it took nothing for him to slide them off his hips, shaking them off his legs along with his briefs. Harry still hadn’t gotten used to the long ivory length of him. Harry liked cocks, of course, but this was the first one that had ever struck him as  _ pretty _ .

Riddle reached into the puddle of his trousers for something in the pocket; a tiny can of lube. Harry remembered its scent from the times before. Fleetingly when he cleaned up after that first time against the door. Deep and absorbing when they’d spent hours together on Riddle’s side of the door that connected their rooms on the island.

He was still a little sore and a little open from two nights before when Riddle’s fingers sank into him, leisurely, probing, finding their mark within what seemed like only a moment, while Harry was still squirming from the burning invasiveness of the penetration.

“Oh, fuck,” he moaned as Riddle’s finger made a firm, slow circle. Harry let the tension out of his arms and flopped back down on the bed, staring straight up at the ceiling, lost to the quickly-growing feeling deep inside.

Riddle massaged Harry’s prostate with the same ruthless proficiency he’d fucked Harry’s mouth, not stopping when Harry gasped out a halfhearted protest, and keeping it up even as Harry came, so that the sensation doubled, tripled in intensity, almost painful— 

Riddle’s fingers slipped out just in the instant before Harry would have gone from ecstatic to agonized. As it was, Harry rode the aftershock like he’d been knocked unconscious, staring straight upward at the ceiling which now seemed to be rotating slowly, barely aware of Riddle fastidiously cleaning all the come he’d splattered himself with from his chest, his stomach, his right thigh. Then Riddle stretched out alongside Harry and made short work of the wrist tie.

Harry moaned, not quite a complaint, at the sudden and dizzying pain of his shoulders and arms, alive with sensation after being drawn up too long in a restricted position, after all his fighting. Riddle picked up his right arm matter-of-factly, rubbing Harry’s wrists, digging into the place just behind his elbow, then firmly massaging his biceps. Harry moaned again, too boneless and fucked out to feel ashamed of being so noisy and needy. The press of Riddle’s thumbs on the juncture of Harry’s shoulder felt almost as good as when Riddle touched his cock.

He felt light pressure against his temple and a voice in his ear. “I’m going to go wash up. I’ll be right back.”

Harry made a noise, rubbing his cheek against the high-threadcount sheet Lavender had dubiously watched him pick out.

_ “You know no one is actually going to sleep on this bed, right?” she’d asked. _

She’d been wrong, Harry thought sleepily as he drifted off within moments of Riddle leaving the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “So are you getting Riddle something for Christmas?” Ron asked with a smirk.
> 
> Harry shoved him hard and fired back. “Oh I don’t know. What are _you_ getting for _Hermione_?”
> 
> That shut him up.


	20. The Master Bathroom, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> Okay, since I've had this question a couple times, NO, you didn't miss/I didn't forget to post a chapter after the party. I'm sorry as I know this is a skipped scene a lot of you would have liked to see -- NO IDEA WHY HAHA -- but that's just the way the advent-fic-cookie crumbled, I'm afraid. 
> 
> I would like to do more than just flashback to this scene but it may require a separate work to do it justice.
> 
> Thank you for understanding!

Harry woke with a start to the sensation of being shaken gently by a large hand in the middle of his back.

His first instinct was to whine about being disturbed and yank the luxuriously-soft blankets back over his head. Then he realized that he’d just fallen asleep half-naked on the project site that was routinely swarming with not only his crew and the producers and production staff but also the camera crews. With their cameras. He sat up, blinking fast, and jerked his head toward the window. He felt a wave of relief when the parted curtains revealed only an empty night sky beyond them.

“We need to get out of here while we still can,” Riddle murmured. Harry focused on him, sitting fully-clothed on the edge of the bed beside Harry, looking at Harry with a thoughtful frown. He touched Harry’s cheek, then the shape of Harry’s collarbone under his t-shirt. “How are you?”

Harry let out a long breath, thinking that through. “Good,” he said, his voice a little rough, a little labored. He didn’t miss Riddle’s reaction to that: he practically lit up, eyes widening a fraction as the corners of his mouth turned up.

Riddle’s hand fell to Harry’s, where it rested in the tangled sheets in Harry’s lap. He stroked Harry’s wrist. He was still sensitive, but not sore, from the rope.

“Perhaps next time we’ll leave a few marks?” Riddle glanced up to see Harry’s reaction to the suggestion. Harry’s heartbeat sped up under the combined effect of Riddle’s words and the look on his face.

“Y-yeah,” Harry breathed through his pleasantly hoarse throat. “I’d like that.”

Riddle closed his hand firmly over Harry’s wrist for a brief moment, squeezing just hard enough that Harry realized that actually, he  _ was _ sore, a faint and deep, lingering pain that fed a small and insistent part of Harry that seemed to have come to life the moment, not so long before, that Riddle turned him around and pressed him into the door to this very house.

“Not very intelligent of us, coming here where my blackmailer can get more pictures?”

“Now, darling,” Riddle said, lifting the arm he was still holding (though gently, now) to press a kiss into Harry’s knuckles. “They’re  _ our _ blackmailer.”

***

“So,” Ron said with a smirk. “You and Riddle.”

Harry snuck a glance over his shoulder but the door remained firmly closed and even if it wasn’t, the whir of the tile saw would have drowned out anything Ron said to him.

“I guess.”

Ron whistled through his teeth. “How long’s it been going on?”

Harry shrugged. “Well, like a couple weeks, right? Since the, uh, first night.” He ducked his head, hoping that Ron wasn’t the kind to ask for  _ details _ , then quickly remembering that Hermione knew about the picture, and could easily have told Ron...but when Harry snuck another glance at Ron he knew without asking that Ron hadn’t seen a fairly clear shot of Harry’s naked ass. He wasn’t the type to see something like that and look at Harry within the same week without blushing.

But Ron did look different than he had a moment before. The good-natured mockery in his expression had given way to a sort of cautious puzzlement.

“So you weren’t hooking up before the show?”

“No,” Harry said, surprised by the question. “Of course not. I’d never even seen him before.”

_ But he’d seen me _ , Harry remembered. Knowing Riddle had gotten Harry on the show,  _ demanded _ he get on, based on a few crappy YouTube videos seemed to carry larger implications than Harry was willing to acknowledge, so once again he skated around thinking too deeply about it.

“Um, Harry,” Ron said, lowering his voice so that he sounded strangely gentle. “It’s okay. You don’t have to lie about it. I’m not going to judge you for...you know. Taking an opportunity.”

Harry stared at Ron in total confusion. After a moment of looking back into Ron’s earnest face, Harry realized that Ron thought that Harry had either taken the opportunity to strategically hook up with Riddle months before in order to get a leg up in his career. Or at least, that Harry had let the guy he was hooking up with give him a leg up in his career, unashamedly.

“Ron,” Harry said lowly, wondering what he could say to make Ron believe him. He definitely didn’t have any evidence he hadn’t known Riddle before the show. That he would be called upon to ever prove such a thing was such a ridiculous state of affairs Harry would have laughed, if he hadn’t been wrestling with the strongest level of offense he’d ever felt in his life. “I really didn’t know Riddle before. He says that he saw a few of my videos and suggested me for the show. But I’d never even talked to him before the first day of filming.”

Ron continued to look skeptical. Harry sighed, frustrated, but before he could say anything else to straighten out this (very uncomfortable) misunderstanding, there was silence from the room where all the noise from the saw had been coming from, and then the door swung open to frame Lavender, hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun, a wide silk scarf wound around her hairline.

“Well, this fucking sucks,” she said pleasantly. “Can we revisit the mosaic tile?”

“No,” Harry said at once. “We already bought the marble.”

Lavender pressed her lips together. “What do you need the money for, anyway? Are you going to wallpaper the dining room in gold for the elective round?”

Seamus poked his head into the conversation, leaning around Lavender to shoot Harry a troubled frown. “You’re not going to waste the elective round on the dining room, right Harry?”

“We’re not talking about this right now,” Ron said calmly, pointing at Seamus with his paint brush. “We have a bathroom to focus on.”

“But you’re obvious tearing out the solarium for the elective round, right? You can’t leave it up for final walk through. It’s a hazard.”

Lavender snorted and gave Seamus a pitying look. “Did you forget everything you’ve ever learned about Harry? Of course he’s going to try to restore that horrible old thing.” Her tone was clipped but when she looked back at Harry it was with a faint, fond smile. “I just hope it doesn’t all literally crash down on our heads, killing us.”

Harry choked on his next breath. “ _ Lav _ !”

She shrugged, unbothered, and turned to slink back the way she’d come. “I’ll just be in here, losing years of my life to how frustrating this is.”

Seamus was still looking hard at Harry. “You’re not going to do the dining room, right?”

“No, Seamus,” Harry sighed. “We’ll do the solarium space one way or another.”

Seamus, shoulders falling with a pleased sigh, smiled and hurried after Lavender, pushing the door closed behind him. As it latched, the whir of the saw started up again.

Harry struggled to remember exactly where he and Ron had left off, but it was all in vain. The cameras chose that moment to come by.

“Hey, Gwen,” Harry called to the one leading the group. She had a tripod propped on her shoulder and she swung it down with a practice motion so it snapped into a fixed position just as the three legs struck the ground.

“Heya Harry,” she said back, tone bright as she pulled her camera out of the bag that rested against her hip.

Ron’s hand landed on Harry’s shoulder, where Harry was so tense he almost expected Ron’s hand to bounce back off. Instead it stayed warm and firm, grounding.

“I believe you,” Ron said quietly. He gave Harry a squeeze and let him go. Harry was off-balance with the relief and affection he felt in that moment, watching Ron go. It was so strange, he marveled, that he could already feel so much closer to Ron than almost anyone else he could remember, considering they’d only met a few weeks before.

Really, the cast of characters in his life had transformed when he came onto the show. That was an obvious side effect of plunging into a new experience in a new place, of course, but these didn’t feel like incidental people, the kind of groups he’d passed through off and on since he was a teenager. The connections here felt deeper, truer, despite their relative brevity: Ron, Lavender, and even the rest of the crew. Hermione Granger, oddly.

Tom Riddle.

“Harry,” Ron prodded quietly. Harry looked up to find that Gwen’s camera was running and pointed at his face.

One of the senior producers who Harry’d seen a lot of today had obviously just asked him a question, based on his expectant look over Gwen’s shoulder. As the field narrowed, there were more people around the project all the time. More constant filming, more people crowding around during his interviews. Thankfully he’d had the previous rounds to work up to it, or it probably would have sent him into a panic.

“I was just asking,” called the senior producer, who Harry was fairly sure was named Ben, but he also thought might be called Elliott, “why you decided to go with the oversized tile, when the floorplan in the bathroom is going to require so many cuts on each tile?”

The master bathroom had been adjacent to a closet, which Harry had days earlier decided they’d knock out, borrowing from the other side of the room to create a larger, walk-in closet more in-line with modern expectations. The original bathroom tile had been in fairly good shape, but it was also incredibly hard to match historic tile without having it custom-made, a luxury the time frame obviously didn’t allow for. Harry hated to replace good tile, especially  _ original _ tile, but he also knew there would be no way to make the room flow if the half that had once been a closet had different flooring than the original portion.

So, with gritted teeth, he had helped Ron and Dean break up the existing tile with a jackhammer and chosen a new tile to lay down so the whole floor was consistent, and to give it the most seamless appearance possible in an oddly-shaped, not particularly large space, he’d chosen large, 20 inch square tile in a milky marble with a very faint green vein.

Harry tried to explain all of this in the fewest, clearest words possible, while at least half his attention was already on the task of maneuvering the slipper tub into its designated place. It would have to go in the moment the tile set, which to be safe shouldn’t be before start of work the next morning.

Harry had been absently gazing in the direction of the bathroom while Gwen, Ben or Elliott, and the rest of the unit went into the bathroom to get a pan of the work in progress. But he didn’t realize that left him and Ron alone again until he felt Ron’s elbow in his ribs and glanced over to find a sly look in his eye again.

“So, are you getting Riddle something for Christmas?” Ron asked with a smirk.

Harry shoved him hard and fired back. “Oh I don’t know. What are  _ you _ getting for  _ Hermione _ ?”

That shut him up.

Meanwhile Harry’s mind flew into a panic. 

Was he supposed to get  _ Riddle _ something for Christmas? The idea was somehow even more absurd than the fact he and Riddle were routinely fucking in a semi-public place. Harry dismissed it at once.

But then a few selective memories from the night at Riddle’s house in the Cape floated into his head. The ones that Harry was alternately trying to repress, because they were too confusing, or replaying on a loop while he basked in the lingering afterglow of how rough Riddle had been with him the night before.

_ Riddle standing by the ostentatious Christmas tree in his ostentatious castle-mansion, surrounded by all his ostentatious society, but with eyes just for  _ Harry _. Riddle saying, while slipping his hand into Harry’s and trailing his thumb down the back of Harry’s hand, “This isn’t just about how much I like having my cock in you, Harry. May I make my intentions more clear?” _

The tile saw shut off again, just in time for Harry and Ron to overhear a long and violent string of curses from Lavender. Harry and Ron exchanged a stunned look in the few moments of silent aftermath before she opened the door. Her cheeks were flushed but she spoke in a deceptively calm voice.

“We’re going to need another tile. The one I’d just had forty-nine cuts in broke in the middle of the fiftieth.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Ron said, wincing, but he was also visibly repressing a laugh. Lavender’s eyes narrowed. “Come on, Lav, if tile work was easy anyone could do it.” He laughed in earnest, holding up his hands and stumbling backward. “Don’t kill me. I’m going.”

The camera crew was edging past Lavender, too, with nervous smiles. “Gonna be great, Harry,” Ben or Elliott murmured in passing, giving Harry a downright awkward double-thumbs-up. Harry, almost as awkwardly, returned it with a single.

“At least we have the weekend,” Lavender sighed, leaning heavily on the doorframe. The sight of her with the wind out of her sails gave Harry a stab of guilt.

“We could reconsider the design,” he said slowly. “Maybe a mosaic tile?”

Lavender pressed her lips together. “Don’t you dare undo the work I’ve already done with a design change.”

“Oh no,” Harry said hastily. “I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” she said, slumping against the doorway again. She looked at him sidelong. “I know I can kind of be a bitch.”

From somewhere out of sight in the bathroom behind her, Harry heard Seamus snort.

“Finnegan, I will  _ end _ you.”

Harry smiled. “I don’t mind.”

Lavender let out a surprised laugh. Harry felt inordinately proud of himself.

“Get out of here, Potter,” she sniffed, recovering her cool mask. “I’m sure you have some sin you should be committing in this house.”

Harry had never  _ felt _ all the blood drain from his face before yet he knew the sensation instantly for what it was.  _ How did she… _ ?

But Lavender went on, “Maybe a neon light instead of the chandelier in the dining room? Or some nice orange shag carpet over that intact parquet in the den.”

“Okay, okay,” Harry said, the urge to laugh that bubbled in his chest attributable in equal parts to real amusement and extreme relief. “I’ll get right on all of that.”

He did have plenty to do. They had a whole weekend, yes, but Harry had terrible luck getting bathrooms to come together. He knew there would be unanticipated changes and issues when they set everything in place.

  
As he set off to figure out how to clean decades of grime from the original vanity fixtures, a big part of Harry’s head was elsewhere. Bouncing between memories of the night in Riddle’s room, the way Riddle’s face looked in the glow of the Christmas tree in the ballroom, the night before with his head on the drawer behind him and no way to stop the slow and demanding advance of Riddle’s cock down his throat— and not least of all the lingering  _ what on Earth could I buy someone like  _ Riddle _ for Christmas? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up: 
> 
> **Unknown number: Harry. I took another picture. I think it's my new favorite.**


	21. The Master Bathroom, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you missed it, yesterday I posted [this prequel from Tom's POV](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873475)!
> 
> Today we have a little more romance, just for Litasly.
> 
> AND, a little bit of social media/outsider POV for triviajin!
> 
> Keep the requests coming! I'm comically behind and still posting as I write. Hahaha! Ha. D:

**TR:** **A car will be at the edge of the site village north of the roundabout in five minutes.**

A few seconds later,

**TR: Dress for dinner.**

Harry had already gotten up from the bed, dismayed by the directive and wondering if he should try to cram a shower into the next five minutes. That didn’t seem realistic, nor did trying to parse the instruction to “dress for dinner.” Was this a dinner that involved a helicopter ride, or pizza?

Harry snorted to himself. Tom Riddle was hardly the type for pizza. Harry wore a fairly dressy outfit Sasha had left “just in case” as a change of clothes, which Harry hadn’t needed, when they went to the cape. Specifically, “in case you’re on camera for breakfast or brunch,” which Harry hoped extended to being off-camera for dinner.

Harry had never done a drug deal, but all the times he’d seen a scene of that nature in television or the movies were on his mind as he waited nervously, hovering around a tree outside the site village, until a black Honda Civic crept into view, rolled to a stop, and rolled down its rear passenger window. 

Riddle wasn’t in the car. Harry probably should have expected that. He could only see the rear profile of the driver: neatly-combed white hair and a set of light blue eyes that flashed occasionally in the rearview mirror but never looked directly at Harry. It was unnerving, like Harry was truly invisible. His palms were damp when he wiped them on his trousers. The fabric had a sheen that Harry didn’t like, but he knew enough of his own limitations to trust Sasha’s instincts over his own in this department.

The car stopped again, and this time the driver got out and opened the door across from Harry so that Tom could slide in.

He—Riddle—looked good. Just as nicely-dressed as usual but with a different slant, reminding Harry that an outfit meant for a day’s business wasn’t the same as an outfit meant for a casual dinner, and probably an outfit meant for brunch wasn’t the same as an outfit meant for a casual dinner either.

If Riddle disapproved of Harry’s clothes, though, he didn’t let on. He reached out at once to take Harry’s hand, settling back against his seat with his head turned in Harry’s direction and his eyes roving over Harry’s face. “How was work, darling?”

Riddle was only half-serious. His expression was playful. But the intent way he awaited an answer made Harry realize he  _ was _ half-serious. He looked like he wanted to know. 

Mystified, all Harry could do was try to answer. “We demo’d a wall and prepped for tile. Lavender got some of it down.”

“An excellent start. I’m glad you found some space to rob for an expansion. Did you…?”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about this. You’re the judge, aren’t you? It’s unfair.” Harry remembered the assistant producer who had sternly informed him he couldn’t speak to Tom alone, and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to smile or grimace.

Riddle stroked Harry’s thumb with his, then released his hand. Harry felt embarrassingly bereft as he pulled his hand awkwardly into his lap and clasped it against his other one, trapping some of the residual warmth from Tom between his palms.

“I’m a judge in title only,” Riddle reminded him. “The viewers vote, not me.” He yawned suddenly, belatedly covering his mouth with his wrist and crinkling his nose at Harry. “Sorry. Long day.”

“Oh?” Harry was fascinated, to his own surprise. “Yeah? I was just going to ask,  _ darling _ , how your day was?”

Though he’d just meant to tease, the endearment came out more easily than Harry would’ve thought.

“Long, as I said. And tedious.”

The generalizations disappointed Harry, but he definitely didn’t feel like he could pry.

“Are we really going somewhere to eat dinner?” Harry glanced out the dark window. “Can we really do that? Hermione said that we shouldn’t be seen together.” That hadn’t been exactly what she’d said, but Harry figured it too was implied.

“There’s a good place in Columbus, apparently.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “That’s like an hour away!” Harry had changed buses there on his way in last month.

“Yes. A safe distance,” Tom reminded him.

“Oh,” Harry said. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But then, it’s not like they don’t have televisions in Columbus.”

“Maybe one or two,” Tom conceded. He stretched an arm over the back of Harry’s seat and tangled his fingertips in Harry’s hair. “There’s a private entrance and at that sort of place, people understand discretion. Don’t worry about it.”

Riddle’s long fingers on his scalp were an unfair distraction. “But…”

“What’s the worst case scenario? If we’re seen, we’re seen. It’s going to happen eventually.”

Harry had no idea what to say to that.

“So,” Riddle prodded, “what did you sacrifice for the bathroom? Did you get lucky with a guest closet?”

Harry huffed a short laugh, giving in and leaning into Riddle’s hand, eyes drifting closed. “No. It was the master closet. But you know that weird nook by the laundry chute? We closed that off completely for a walk-in.”

“Oh, nicely done.”

The drive seemed to pass quickly. Harry was surprised when the car eased to a total stop and the engine cut.

The driver opened Harry’s door and he slid out into a surprisingly cold, clear evening outside an understated side entrance to a large, square building. He hugged himself, missing the warmth of the vehicle right away and anxious to get inside.

Tom had slid across the seat and gotten out through Harry’s door as well, beginning to shrug into his black wool coat. Now he frowned.

“Where’s your coat?”

Harry shrugged. “Didn’t wear one. Can we go inside?”

Riddle stopped putting his coat on himself and put it on Harry instead. Harry, surprised, felt its weight settle around him as heat flooded his cold cheeks. There was something unnerving about feeling Tom’s businesslike touch through two layers of fabric, straightening the collar and lapels.

“Let’s go in,” Tom said, nudging Harry along with a hand on the small of his back.

The side-street entrance may have been understated, but the inside of the building was almost comically decadent. Harry snorted at the oil paintings in their lighted frames, snorted at the cuts of meat resting behind glass in their lighted cases, and then stopped snorting because he realized he was probably starting to sound like a horse.

A woman at a small desk took the coat, then Riddle guided Harry softly by the elbow after the hostess, to a quiet table in the sheltered corner of a room that, while large, managed to feel intimate. No one did more than glance their way as they sat at a small, tablecloth-shrouded two-seat table.

Their server was a tall, middle-aged man so well-spoken he might have been a professor and so graceful he might have been a dancer. His name was Reggie, and while his eyes sparked with a warm flash of recognition when he introduced himself to Tom, he never commented on his celebrity and Harry knew that Tom had been right. No one here was going to call the paparazzi.

The menu was printed on material so substantial Harry spent a solid minute trying to figure out if it was paper or fabric, then another minute studying the terms he didn’t know in the entree list, then another minute wondering if it was really responsible to have a menu without any prices. Maybe at a place like this he was better off not knowing.

When he finally looked up, he found Tom watching him.

“Shall I order for you?” 

Harry hated the idea on principle, but he thought it would be more embarrassing to try to decipher the menu himself any longer, so he nodded hesitantly.

Reggie returned and Riddle smoothly ordered fettuccine for Harry (something Harry recognized at least), something Harry couldn’t pronounce for himself, a handful of sides, a French-titled starter and two different wines to try.

Harry had assumed the restaurant would embarrass him at every turn, but after he got over his bout of nerves from looking at the menu, Tom’s calm attention and Reggie’s warm demeanor combined to make the evening perfect. Tom relayed some stories of his first experiences with live television that left Harry laughing more than he was eating through the starters, then Tom asked so many clueless questions about YouTube that Harry was both talking and laughing more than he was eating through the entree. That meant the evening wore on toward two hours but no one seemed in any hurry, and after his second glass of frighteningly delicious red wine, Harry would have been content to spend the rest of his life in that quiet dining room too.

“Any professional ambitions beyond YouTube?”

It was a shift in tone, but Harry was still lulled by the relaxation of the past two hours and didn’t hesitate to answer. “Well,” Harry began. “I have been thinking of getting a manager.” He thought that sounded less strange than saying he’d been thinking of letting Ron be his manager, even though the latter would be more accurate. He twirled his fork in his pasta and watched it gather on the tines of the heavy fork, marveling that in Tom’s world, even the  _ silverware _ was substantially different.

“Oh?” Tom was sipping his wine, his plate untouched. “Oh? Would you care for a referral?”

“No,” Harry said, trying to be patient. Then he felt a flare of indignation. “I’ve been approached already. Ron wants to get into management. You know, from my crew.”

He was expecting Tom to look disdainful, but he didn’t. He set down his wine glass and took a sip of water instead, nodding thoughtfully.

“That can be better. Someone hungry, self-made. Someone who comes from nothing might work much harder for you than some entitled brat like my little Draco.” Riddle’s mouth turned up in a wicked smile that might have made Harry jealous if it wasn’t faintly sinister, like Tom was talking about a mouse he enjoyed stalking and terrifying for sport.

“Comes from nothing,” Harry echoed, a little offended on Ron’s behalf, then remembered something and added without thinking, “Like you, right?” 

As soon as Harry asked, he wished he hadn’t. Tom looked at him sharply, going very still, and Harry remembered that while every fan of Tom Riddle knew he’d grown up in an orphanage, the other thing they knew was that he never willingly talked about it, even indirectly.

“Somewhat,” Tom finally allowed, voice low, eyes intent. Harry’s fork slid out of his hand and clattered to his plate. “And somewhat like you, as well.”

“I suppose,” Harry murmured. He didn’t like talking about this subject either, which made him feel even worse about having brought it up. To his relief, though, Tom let it go, signaling Reggie.

“We’ll look at a dessert menu, please.” Harry made a face. 

“I can’t eat anything else.” He had been determined to finish his entree, the best pasta he’d ever eaten. In fact it was so good, he thought they should come up with another name for what he’d been eating all his life, which was a poor imitation of this melt-in-your-mouth ambrosia.

“Then I won’t order for you,” Tom replied coolly. “But you’ll be missing out. What, no sweet tooth?”

Harry  _ did _ have a sweet tooth. He hesitated.

“The maple creme brulee is said to be excellent.”

Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure I’ll have room again in a few more minutes.”

Tom smiled and briskly addressed Reggie on his return path. “We don’t need your menu after all. Two orders of the creme brulee, and two espressos.”

The heavy forks, the tall candles, the menus without prices—they were all things Harry had always repudiated on principle. But as he sipped special reserve espresso from his tiny white cup and loaded his spoon eagerly with his third bite of soft, sweet-but-salty, the top layer crisp and caramelized, Harry had to admit that he was enjoying all the luxuries, one after the other, that he seemed to encounter while at Tom’s side.

After dinner, Harry paused on the curb, again wearing Tom’s coat, and started to ask where they were going. He’d simply assumed the night wasn’t over yet.

But Tom slid his coat from Harry’s shoulders and gave his hand a parting squeeze, then tucked him into the back of the hired car alone.

Harry couldn’t help reaching for Tom’s wrist. “You’re not coming?”

Tom’s slow smile was smug. “No, even though I hate to disappoint you.”

Harry let out a breath through his nose. I’m not disappointed. I was just asking.”

Tom twisted his arm in a neat maneuver that left him holding Harry by the wrist instead of Harry holding Tom. He leaned his upper body down and kissed the back of Harry’s hand, a quick press of lips. Harry felt like he could feel the curve of Tom’s smile.

“Tonight was about  _ romance _ , Harry,” Tom said, straightening up with a wink and letting Harry’s hand slip free. He closed the car door and took one bouncing step back up onto the curb, hands in his pockets and a half-grin on his face as Harry stared out the window and the car pulled away.

***

Safely back in his trailer an hour later and unable to sleep, riding the heady drug of carbs and sugar, Harry happened to google the “xmas special CLN.” Astoundingly, it was the first time he’d done it since the couple days right after Hermione’s phone call. Everything was considerably different.

He immediately wished he hadn’t.

When he’d stumbled on his own name to see the results weeks before, he thought he’d learned a lesson. But now here it was, over and over, mention  _ of Harry _ by people he didn’t know, and entire  _ articles _ talking about his successes and failures on the various episodes. Suddenly, the exquisite meal Harry had just eaten sat heavily in his stomach.

One of the trending Tweets was from an enterprising young woman who had created stills from the CLN videos of Harry on various ladders or parts of the floor in the project, bending or stretching so his shirt rode up — Sasha really should give him longer shirts.

The text of the Tweet was simply  _ Dear Universe, you’re welcome. _

The text on the re-tweets were worse.

_ Life’s most pressing question: what is in Harry Potter’s pants? ...the tattoo, you pervs, I’m talking about the tattoo. _

_ Dear harry, pls crawl on me, signed an original hardwood floor _

Okay, that one was actually pretty funny.

_ I just want HP to reno my house for $2 then live with me in it is that too much to ask. _

Harry laughed out loud at that one, baffled.

In fact, the more he read, the more he laughed.

Then a text notification interrupted him.

**Unknown number: Harry. I took another picture. I think it's my new favorite.**

**Unknown number: Twitter will thank me for finally piecing together your entire tatoo in all its mysterious glory.**


	22. The Master Bathroom, Part Three

Saturday night work ran late on the bathroom, but unlike the master bedroom, everything was coming together beautifully and ahead of schedule. They hadn’t wanted to move fixtures in the bathroom so there hadn’t been much plumbing to do, the floor had finished going in that morning, Lavender having mastered the difficult cuts with the tile saw and setting a swift pace, and the closet had been built into an existing corner so hardly required any framing.

The day had also been interspersed with meeting with Hermione and the investigator about the most recent text and trying his best to stay off social media. Harry was tired. 

But leaning in the doorway of the bathroom, he couldn’t help admiring the progress there. Everything needed a thorough wipe-down and polish, and the mirror and decor weren’t in, but it was still in great shape.

The tub, toilet and vanity were positioned. Harry was almost done caulking the shower. They were set to film the next morning for a pre-recorded episode that would air Monday.

Harry wanted to make the finals. He’d poured all he had into the bathroom and couldn’t imagine it being more perfect. If he didn’t get a chance to work on the elective room he’d probably regret it always.

Speaking of the elective room…

He asked Ron, who he’d heard come up behind him, “What do you think I should do, if I get a shot at the solarium?”

Ron didn’t answer immediately. Harry turned to find him resting his hip against the dresser in the bedroom behind Harry, frowning thoughtfully.

“Well, you’ve got fifty grand? If you’re going to spend fifty grand— of someone else’s money, remember — what better way than by having something like that restored?

Keeping the solarium meant having beams engineered, built and installed by a small team of architects and structural engineers, then re-glazing all the glass. Tearing out all the shoddy exterior wall that was presently separating the old solarium from the weatherized portion of the house, and most likely a substantial amount of floor patching.

Even if they had the expertise, Harry’s crew couldn’t pull that off within the time constraints, so Harry would have to hire experts, on short notice. It would cost every penny of the remaining budget of $45,743.32, and that was factoring in contractors working at a reduced rate because of the free press they’d get from being on the show.

“They’re giving the houses away to people in the community,” Harry said. 

“Yeah. I think that’s pretty great.”

“Me too. But like, those people will still have to maintain the houses. Pay taxes. Utilities. I could just cash out the budget and leave it in a jar on the nightstand.”

Ron grinned. “The audience would either love that or hate it.”

Harry grinned back and they were both quiet for a moment. Harry went into the bathroom and tested his first layer of caulk. It was still tacky, so he stepped back to give in another few minutes.

“Can I ask you something?”

Harry was surprised by Ron’s tone, a little low and a little fast, not his usual easy speech.

“Of course.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Ron began slowly, looking at Harry then quickly away, “but Tom Riddle is like...really famous.”

Harry gave Ron a long look, but Ron wasn’t really looking back, except to take little fleeting glances.

“Yeah, he is. I know that.”

“And he’s older, with more experience. And don’t take this the wrong way, but he’s really sophisticated.”

“What exactly would be the wrong way to take these comments?” Harry asked, amused.

Ron managed a ghost of a smile. “It’s just he’s...do you ever think he’s, I don’t know, out of your league?” Ron winced at his own question. “Oh, fuck. I’m an asshole. Don’t answer that.”

Harry was incredulous. “You’re not an asshole. That’s like, an obvious thing. He’s definitely out of my league.”

Ron looked relieved. “But you’re still dating.”

Harry tilted his head back and forth and jerked his shoulders up in a shrug. “Not really. I mean, I don’t think it could be called dating, really. We just…”

He didn’t finish that sentence. He thought the silence implied what they “just” in and of itself.

Ron snorted. “He literally signed a form saying that you’re dating. And you signed one saying you’re dating him.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “I definitely didn’t.”

Ron’s brows rose. “Yes, you did. You signed it the day after Hermione found out. She wanted to make sure all the paperwork was in place, especially those waivers.” When Harry continued to draw a blank, Ron prompted, “A courier brought them? Handed you a pen right after that producer interview where you almost came just from talking about wire and tube electric?’

Harry did remember being handed a clipboard and pen, now that Ron mentioned it, and signing something he hadn’t read. Which now seemed incredibly stupid.

Ron rubbed his forehead. “I’m starting to regret recruiting you as my first client.”

“Anyway,” Harry interjected, “what was your point before?”

“Oh, right.” Ron looked kind of miserable. “Maybe I can describe it like—my brother Bill, he used to always want to play this game. Kind of an offensive game, but anyway. When we were people watching and we saw a couple he’d say, ‘who’s the lucky one?’ And since you didn’t know the people you like, decided which one you thought was hotter and said the other one, the slightly-less-hot one, was the lucky one.”

Harry wasn’t tracking the conversation so far, but he nodded encouragingly when Ron shot him a quick glance.

“And I always think like, if people knew me and Hermione were together and they were playing that game, but with the whole picture, they’d definitely think I was the lucky one. And Riddle— I mean, according to at least three magazines he’s a huge catch.”

“Okay,” Harry laughed, “so in Bill’s game  _ I’m  _ the lucky one. Got it.”

Ron blushed. “Yeah. Like I said, an asshole. But it’s just...I don’t know how to tell Hermione that I want to really be together. A part of me thinks she’s going to just think that I’m, I don’t know, an idiot for asking, when she’s obviously—when she could easily do better. You know? Like who am I to think I’m really _ that _ lucky, that she’d want to be with me for real?”

_ This _ Harry really hadn’t expected, and all his discomfort disappeared immediately to be replaced with the warm and insistent urge to reassure.

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re smart but not pretentious, kind but not, like,  _ boring-nice _ , you know? And a lot of people are into this tall, muscular thing you’ve got going on. There’s whole Facebook groups for ginger enthusiasts too.”

Ron gave a startled laugh. “Okay, stop.”

Harry smiled. “I’m not fucking with you.  _ You’re _ a catch, and more of one because you don’t realize it. You should to tell her,” he added, thinking with a sense of revelation about the look in Hermione’s eye when he’d caught her watching Ron. “Yeah, you really should,” he repeated firmly.

Ron glanced at him, a little more lingering this time. “Okay.” He looked away, his gaze settling on the mirror propped against the wall, and nodded several times. “Yeah, okay. I will.”

“Good.”

They fell silent again, a thoughtful, companionable silence. But Harry’s thoughts had turned in an inconvenient direction based on Ron’s mention of actual forms declaring him to be in a relationship with Riddle, and vice versa. That seemed to be definitive proof that Harry had Christmas shopping to do.

“So, from one lucky one to another, what should I get Tom for Christmas?” 

Ron’s expression cleared. “Oh, I actually know this! I googled it a few days ago. ‘What to get when the relationship is still new, but you think it could be forever.’”

Harry shook his head. “Oh my God. Are you kidding me?”

“The answer,” Ron pressed on like he hadn’t heard, “is diamond earrings.” He paused and blinked at Harry. “Actually I’m not sure what the answer is in your case.”

Harry’s laughter, which he’d been tamping down for the majority of the conversation, finally bubbled over. He had to clutch his stomach after he laughed and laughed til it ached.

“Okay, fair enough. I’ll do my own googling.” He shot Ron a reproving look. “And just so you know, I consider them just as lucky as we are. I think we’re pretty great, personally.”

Ron gave him a companionable shove, which Harry had learned translated to a friendly hug. Harry shoved him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up: 
> 
> “Harry, are you still pretending you’re not in a relationship?”
> 
> Harry glared. He wasn’t _pretending_. Why was he the only person around reasonable enough to know that relationships didn’t form in a few weeks and it was only a matter of time until...
> 
> “He’s going to lose interest,” Harry said flatly. Somehow saying it out loud was better than just thinking it.


	23. Interlude

Forty-five minutes into a wandering conversation with Draco Malfoy that had been half business discussion, half argument, Hermione finally lost her patience.

“Oh, please,” she snapped. “Don’t threaten me, Malfoy. As though _I_ would be the one worried about the _optics_ —your client manipulated us into casting his boyfriend in the show, without disclosing the conflict!”

Malfoy wasn’t a very good liar. He had many shameless vices, and while he probably wished he could lie convincingly, he really couldn’t.

So Hermione could tell by the look on his face that what she’d said came as a shock to him.

“I can tell you with one-hundred-percent certainty that whatever is going on now between him and Potter wasn’t going on when Potter was cast.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Oh?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said at once, flushing. “I know because he had three interns at the agency trawl YouTube until they found Potter’s content. They told me after the cast announcement. Apparently they were  _ encouraged _ to be discreet. Why would he have three interns looking for Potter? If they were sleeping together, he would have known where to look for himself.”

Hermione searched his pinched face for signs of dishonesty and, finding none, let out a long rush of breath through her teeth.

“But then... _ how _ …?”

Draco laughed shortly. “I don’t know.”

Hermione pressed her lips together. Harry was undeniably a cute guy, with a sweetness and sincerity that Hermione understood were hard to find in the general human populace. But what about him was so extraordinary, so hard to resist, that he’d accidentally seduced a filthy rich, handsome, older man the same day they’d met?

Draco was watching her with a rueful smile. “I don’t get it either.”

Of course, Hermione thought with a spot of warmth in her chest, other people’s relationships didn’t tend to make sense from the outside looking in. And preoccupation with that outside perspective was a drain.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone will assume they were sleeping together. So my argument holds.” She folded her arms.

Malfoy looked at her askance. “I don’t accept that conclusion, but I acknowledge it is a possible outcome.”

Hermione laughed and leaned back in her chair, suddenly exhausted. “Well, thank you for that.”

“So we’re back to the central question then.”

“Yes, yes,” Hermione said, waving her hand at him. “I’m tracking our conversation just fine, thanks.”

“Well?”

“I’m going to have to think about it.”

Draco looked like he was about to argue, then stopped himself. He swiveled his chair to and fro. “And the other thing?”

“I’ll take care of it. I want to keep it as quiet as possible, but it isn’t like we can keep it totally anonymous, considering who it was.”

“You’re going to tell them yourself? Doesn’t one of your assistant producers have a closer relationship? Maybe not with Potter, but at least with the crew?”

Hermione refused to blush. “No."

Draco looked intensely thoughtful, but he didn’t try to guess. “Okay, then. Let me know what you decide.”

“I will.”

Draco was winding a green scarf around his neck by the door as he looked at her narrowly and delivered his parting words, “Just to be clear, Granger. There’s a right answer and a wrong one. We both know it."

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Good _ bye _ , Draco.”

When the door closed behind him, Hermione glanced at her watch. The master bath episode was halfway through airing. Voting would open after that. She considered delaying until the next morning. If Harry was eliminated, he wouldn’t need to know the particulars. But after watching the first few minutes of the portion of the episode dedicated to Harry’s bathroom, it had been obvious that he would make the top three.

Hermione loved seeing spaces transformed, particularly on a show like this, where houses neglected for years had new life breathed into them. But she was able to set aside her personal preferences and see the episode through the audience’s eyes. And with the audience, the actual design was only part of what preoccupied them.

So it wasn’t the way the enlarged tile made the floor look like one piece of marble, or the cast iron utility sink, probably part of the original kitchen and one of the things Harry had found in that dank basement, that secured the victory in Hermione’s mind.

It was when Francesca slid open one of two pocket doors to the artfully masked closet space Harry had created and turned with a broad smile.

“ _ His and hers closets! What a brilliant touch.” _

_ The cameras switched to Harry. He had a rueful little smile, the million-dollar one Hermione didn’t think even the most gifted actor could have emulated on cue. It put a tiny wrinkle in the bridge of his nose. “Well, it depends, right? If it was my house, for example, they’d be his and his closets.” _

Hermione laughed out loud. 

_ Francesca looked briefly stunned, but recovered quickly with an apologetic laugh and a fond shake of her head. Over her shoulder and almost outside of the shot, Tom Riddle hid a smile badly by angling his face down, which didn’t mask the upward slant of his mouth and highlighted the bit of color that had found its way into that ever-stoic, amiable mask. _

“Wow,” Hermione murmured to herself. He really had it bad. As though she hadn’t already evidence enough.

“ _ Hermione _ ,” called a producer over the headset. “ _ There’s a man here who won’t identify himself. _ ”

“Is he wearing cargo pants?”

_ “Um, yeah. _ "

Then it had to be agent Brad, the least-well-dressed member of the FBI.

“I know him. Send him in.”

***

A few minutes after playback, while he was still in the middle of exchanging hugs with the crew, one of the runners tapped Harry on the shoulder and told him to check his phone.

He did, and found a few messages from Hermione. Apparently they were having a meeting. Now.

The first and only FBI agent Harry had ever met was rifling through the backpack when Harry came into the makeshift conference room Hermione and Draco had fashioned in Hermione’s trailer. A desk and card table were shoved together to make room for everyone, and someone had carried in folding chairs from somewhere in the site village, probably craft services.

Brad couldn’t have been further from what Harry would have imagined two weeks before if someone had said he’d meet an investigator with the FBI. For one thing, he didn’t wear a black suit and dark sunglasses. For another, he didn’t speak in a cool tone and pause for long moments to gaze thoughtfully at the middle distance, like every actor’s depiction Harry could recall. Instead he wore cargo khakis, battered black skechers, and a navy button-down that need ironing even by Harry’s relaxed standards. Brad had thinning hair but a boyish smile, and he carried a backpack instead of a briefcase.

“Oh, hi, Harry,” Brad said cheerfully. “Just have a seat.”

Tom was already there, sitting in a folding chair but deliberately, Harry assumed, at the part of the table that was a wooden desk and not a rickety card table. He smiled at Harry.

Tom’s agent was there too, on his feet and leaning against the wall opposite the door. He caught Harry’s eye and they exchanged cool looks of dislike for a long moment before Tom interrupted them. He got up and crossed to the doorway where Harry had been lingering. 

“Why do you never wear a coat?” he murmured, touching Harry’s cheek with his wrist like he was testing him for hypothermia.

“It’s like forty degrees outside,” Harry said, shrugging. “I live in Chicago. I’m used to it.”

Tom wrinkled his nose. “Come sit by me.” His tone didn’t make it sound like a suggestion, and while Harry didn’t like being bossed around, he was too fractious to argue. Votes would be coming in. The urge to check his phone made his hand twitch. 

Harry took the folding chair besides Tom, which positioned him at the juncture of the desk and card table, the legs of both jammed up against his knees.

“So, we have it all sorted out,” said Brad in a cheerful voice like they were discussing a dinner party menu and not the commission of a crime. He took three few messy folders out of his backpack and spread them in front of him. He was sitting at the short end of the card table, which made up the head in their little arrangement. Hermione sat opposite him, her hair pulled back into a bun, circles under her eyes almost the same color as her maroon cowl-neck sweater. Harry stared at her, bewildered.

“We do?”

She smiled tightly. “Yes. You don’t have to worry about getting any more texts, Harry.”

“So who…?” Harry stopped himself and cleared his throat. “I guess I don’t really need to know who it is.”

Brad laughed shortly. “Reining in your curiosity like that is very admirable, Harry.”

“Under the circumstances, you actually  _ do _ need to know,” said Hermione. “Agent Benedict, maybe you should start from the beginning?”

Brad, who apparently also went by Agent Benedict, nodded and fixed Harry with a solemn look. “We’d deduced that it was someone who had access to the site village as well as the project. It had to be someone with reason to know that Mr. Riddle had a particular interest in Harry. So we narrowed it down, and then pulled some cell phone records, and that was that. Before I give you the name, Harry, I need you to know we’re very confident we got the right person. Okay?”

“Okay,” Harry said tersely. “Just— who was it?”

It was Hermione who said, “Lavender Brown.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up:
> 
> “Why do you like my tattoo so much?” Harry muttered, cheeks warm.
> 
> Tom’s cool fingers traced a curving path that Harry knew must be the spine of the snake. “What I wonder is why you put it on your body if you didn’t want people to admire it.”
> 
> “It was an impulse,” Harry admitted, leaning his forehead back on his crossed wrists, resisting the urge to grind into the bedsheets as Riddle’s touch on his lower back inevitably riled him up. “Alcohol was involved.”


	24. The Elective, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time anal rimming for AnguisReginam 
> 
> And yeah, if that isn't your thing, I think you'll see it coming and feel free to skim <3
> 
> I FINISHED WRITING TODAY! The fic will update tomorrow and then the final update will be posted on Christmas morning my time. Thank you so much for your comments! They mean the world.

The blackmailer was _Lavender_.

Harry was so dazed by the revelation, Tom managed to maneuver him into his car with him almost without Harry noticing and certainly without any pushback, though Harry might have preferred to be alone if it had been up to him.

This time Tom took him to his hotel, to Harry’s amusement, where room service had a tray waiting in a sprawling suite. They were in a neighboring city twenty miles away.

“This is where you stay, then? What about your trailer?”

Tom lifted the lid from the tray and inspected the food with a critical eye. Harry had been too nervous to eat earlier in the day but at the smell of gourmet food, his appetite came racing back. He picked up something that looked like grilled cheese but tasted transcendent and inhaled it, not noticing Tom’s attention until he was licking his fingers.

“What?” 

“Go get on the bed.”

Harry was willing to be distracted, so he went. The food would be there later, he figured.

***

When Harry had stayed over at the house on the Cape, Tom woke before him. But this time Harry found himself blinking into the faint lamplight to find Tom still sleeping, on his side, turned toward Harry. His hand, cool even in sleep, was cupping Harry’s elbow as though even in sleep, he needed to keep track of Harry.

Before the contest, Harry never would have dreamed he’d have sex with Tom Riddle, ever. Then things between them escalated so fast, Harry could hardly digest his shock, but somehow waking up in a bed with Riddle felt far more unexpected than when he’d nailed Harry against a door. 

Harry hadn’t thought he’d ever be in the same bed as Tom for reasons other than sex. Literally sleeping with Tom was strange, like having your accountant detail your car. Incongruous. He seemed so vulnerable, his unguarded expression almost unrecognizable.

Harry dared to move the arm Tom wasn’t touching and gently put the pad of his thumb against the square part of Tom’s jaw, the tiny indentation there not quite a dimple. He felt the scratch of stubble too, and the ghosting of Tom’s breath on his hand.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Tom murmured, and Harry snatched his hand back, rolling onto his stomach so he could hide his face. Riddle’s hand stayed on him, sliding from his elbow to the small of Harry’s back.

“I thought you were asleep.”

Tom’s hand pulled the tangled sheet low on Harry’s waist. 

“No,” he said faintly, as though distracted. Harry realized what he was looking at. It had given him pause at the cape, too. He’d spent a full minute holding Harry by the hips and delaying the fuck Harry was gagging for in order to make a full study.

“Why do you like my tattoo so much?” Harry muttered, cheeks warm.

Riddle’s cool fingers traced a curving path that Harry knew must be the spine of the snake. “What I wonder is why you put it on your body if you didn’t want people to admire it.”

“It wasn’t an impulse,” Harry admitted, leaning his forehead back on his crossed wrists, resisting the urge to grind into the bedsheets as Riddle’s touch on his lower back inevitably riled him up. “Alcohol was involved.”

“So it wasn’t your design?” Tom sounded uncharacteristically quiet and careful.

“No, something I saw in a book of sketches the artist had out. I thought something along the lines of, ‘cool, a lion fighting a snake,’ and just went with it.”

“Fighting?” Tom scoffed. “They’re dancing.”

Harry laughed. “You’d think so.”

“Hmm.” The mattress shifted as Tom eased nearer, sliding one of his knees over the back of Harry’s thighs, effectively pinning him down. His breath tickled Harry’s back a moment before Harry felt his open mouth on the tattoo. He jerked and shivered.

“ _Hey_.” He wasn’t sure whether what Tom was doing was best described as licking, biting, or kissing, but it felt amazing and his complaining was short-lived. He spread his legs so he could bend his unpinned knee for leverage and drag his now-rock-hard cock against the sheets with more friction. It didn’t even occur to Harry to be embarrassed. Tom had always approved of Harry being eager.

Tom chuckled, moving lower until he was at the base of the tattoo, right at the cleft of Harry’s ass.

“Fuck,” Harry breathed at the suggestion of wet pressure that near his hole. Tom paused, maneuvering his body again so he was crouched over Harry’s thighs. He held Harry firmly by the tops of his thighs, stopping his grinding. A fingernail bit into the soft skin of Harry’s inner thigh; he didn’t think it was deliberate.

“So gorgeous,” Tom said, as though to himself. “I’ve never seen anything better.” He let go of Harry briefly and swept a hand down his back again. “And with custom ink,” he added, almost inaudible.

Harry didn’t know what he meant by that, and also didn’t care. He tried to thrust and Riddle’s hand snapped back into position on his leg, holding him still.

“No. I’m going to take care of you. It’s Christmas.”

Harry twitched, but lay still, smiling into his arms. “No it isn’t.”

“Close enough. I’ve already gotten your present.” Tom bent and pressed his chin into Harry’s right ass cheek. “Want to know what it is?”

Harry’s stubbornness warred with curiosity. He was obviously being baited. Most importantly, he needed Tom to fuck him or jerk him off or blow him, immediately.

He settled for admitting, “I don’t really care about anything except getting off at the moment.”

Tom’s laugh sent a burst of hot air over Harry in a way that made him want to moan. He bit his wrist instead. And then he was glad he had done something to stifle himself, because Tom’s mouth was _there_ , and _no one had ever done this to Harry before_.

A darting tongue, then the rasp of a faintly stubbled cheek on his ass, and then Tom pulled him apart for better access and lowered his mouth again.

“Fuck,” Harry gasped at the rake of teeth and the _hot, wet_ … “You...you’re really…” He swallowed. He’d never particularly yearned for a rim job, beside an ordinary sort of passing curiosity, but now that he was getting one he had no words, only a spinning head flooded with sensation. A thread of tense resistance broke in him and he slumped against the pillows, boneless and groaning. Tom made an approving noise, working his tongue over Harry leisurely, alternating little darting motions and long, swirling, lazy swipes, as though he had all the time in the world.

Harry lost track of time at some point. He didn’t know what could make someone feel more wholly worshipped than this, or why exactly it felt so good, and he was past caring. Tom’s saliva was trailing between his thighs and wetting his balls, which Tom occasionally drifted down to lick at, firmly rubbing around his hole when he did, but not pushing in with so much as a fingertip.

“God, I need to…”

Tom paused, but kept his face close so his breath heated Harry’s sensitized skin. “Are you asking for something?”

“Y-yes.”

“How do you ask?” 

“Please,” Harry groaned immediately, beyond shame. “Help me come.”

“I think you could ask a little more nicely,” Tom chided, and continued with a punishing vigor.

“ _Tom,_ please,” Harry gasped. He didn’t think he’d ever said Tom’s name out loud, or at least, not without his last name. It sounded almost unbearably intimate, but that was ridiculous, considering Tom had his _face in Harry’s_ …

Anyway, Tom apparently approved, because he moved himself off Harry enough he could scoot Harry up onto his hands and knees, slide a hand around his stomach and jerk him firmly with a spit-slick hand. Harry came with a cry, a gasp, watering eyes and an instant, boneless laziness that had him slumping against the circle of Tom’s arms.

Without doing Harry the courtesy of asking, Tom pushed his thighs apart and sank into him in one sweet thrust. Harry’s eyes streamed in earnest at the fresh abuse of his exquisitely sensitive rim, and the aching pressure on his prostate when he’d just come. But there was a sweet satisfaction in bearing it in silence, particularly when Tom, always so silent and composed, thrust so fast he was arhythmic, struggling to get purchase at the difficult angle with Harry lying flat on his stomach. He wound up pulling out and jerking himself off in the last moment so his come spattered Harry’s back.

Harry smirked into the damp sheets his face was pressed against. Of course he’d come all across the tattoo. Harry would probably have to get used to that.

“I’m going to get a towel.” Tom leaned over Harry’s back and kissed his cheek, startling Harry into picking up his head and blinking into Tom’s up-close face. Tom smiled, adjusted his angle and kissed Harry’s mouth. Then he swung himself over Harry’s body and off the edge of the bed in a smooth motion, meandering naked to the bathroom. Harry watched him go, mesmerized by the sight of his long legs and the tease of the shadow of his cock and balls between them.

Then Harry’s phone buzzed. He happened to be within reach of his discarded jeans, so he slid his hand into the pocket and pulled it free. He looked blankly at the screen, a blend of emotions he couldn’t parse coursing through him. The results from the vote were in.

Tom’s phone was ringing. He came back out of the bathroom with a towel around his hips and another in his hand. He saw Harry’s face and frowned.

“What is it?”

“I didn’t make it,” Harry said flatly, rolling over and then grimacing at the feeling of Tom’s come smearing against his skin. He got to his feet and took the towel as he walked past Tom and went into the bathroom himself. Tom didn’t try to stop him.

The bathroom mirror showed Harry his reflection from the center of his ribs up. He leaned against the counter and turned on the water, avoiding his own eye. But he still noticed the shadow of Tom forming in the open doorway behind him, a specter over reflected-Harry’s shoulder. 

“I’m fine.”

“Of course you are. It’s immaterial. Everyone knows who you are. Who wins something like that is an afterthought.”

Harry looked up at the mirror so he could glare at the reflection of Tom. “Well, for _me_ , the prize money wouldn’t have been an afterthought.”

Riddle folded his arms and smiled calmly. “So you aren’t fine.”

Harry thought about it. “I’d gotten used to moving on to the next round. I wanted to do something with the solarium.” He swallowed. “I’ve gotten used to being on the set. Made friends.” He ducked his head. He couldn’t bring himself to ask what it meant for him and Tom that they no longer had any reason to be in the same state, let alone the same town.

“This just gives you time to rest before we fly to LA in the morning.” 

Harry looked up again, dubious. He knew Tom well enough by now to realize this was Tom’s version of an invitation. And despite himself, Harry was interested.

“Tomorrow’s Christmas.” Technically, it was already Christmas Eve.

“Was there someone else you intended to spend it with?”

Harry ignored the tone, distracted by a sudden thought. “Does this mean I get to see your house?”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “Obviously.”

Harry couldn’t contain his grin. Seeing it, Tom looked bemused.

“I should probably be offended that the part of this you’re excited about is seeing my house, but then, I’m not entirely surprised. Get dressed. Your crew will want to see you this morning so you can all bemoan the elimination process together, I imagine.”

Mention of his crew reminded Harry uncomfortably of who _wouldn’t_ be there. He grimaced. He still hadn’t heard what had happened with Lavender, exactly, but the clear implication was that wherever she was, she wouldn’t be back on the set.

****

Tom had to go to a meeting, which meant that Harry got into Tom’s car on his own.

“Could we maybe stop at Starbucks?” he tentatively asked the still-nameless white-haired driver. “I’d like to take coffee for the group.”

He might have thought that the driver hadn’t even heard, he was so unresponsive, but when he pulled onto the highway he was going in the direction of the end of town with restaurants and businesses, the opposite direction from Titan.

Bringing coffee seemed like a good way to diffuse the secondhand disappointment of the crew. Harry really, really hadn’t expected that he’d get in line and realize the blond woman in sweatpants waiting in front of him was Lavender Brown.

She saw him the moment he saw her. There was a few feet between them that suddenly felt like a cavernous space, and also not enough space at all.

“Hi,” Harry managed eventually, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hi. It wasn’t me,” was Lavender’s reply. She never was one for small-talk.

“Um, I don’t…” Harry was not prepared for this, at all. “What are you doing here? Are you still following me?” he added in a hiss, glancing around them, but there seemed no threat of being overheard; the person ahead of them in line was loudly deliberating whether to get a scone or muffin, and the two people behind them were on their phones.

“I just told you, it wasn’t me. It was Violet,” Lavender said flatly.

Harry’s head jerked sharply in her direction. Then he sighed and backed out of the line and toward a corner table. Lavender followed closely, looking at him with tired, but focused eyes ringed in dark circles.

“She was always asking me questions about you. She wanted you to win. I didn’t think of it back then— assistant producers have favorites, that’s normal. But she chose you early on. And one night…” Lavender swallowed and glanced away. “One night she borrowed my access badge. She said she’d left something on one of the sites and wanted to get it before an early meeting the next morning.”

“Was it…?”

“That first night, yes.”

Harry wanted to believe Lavender, which made him distrust the way his mind was slotting things together, the way his every memory of Violet suddenly seemed suspect. Was he just trying to talk himself into the answer he wanted?

“But what about the phone records?”

Lavender looked frustrated. “I don’t know. That part must have been messed with, somehow?” She saw Harry’s frown deepen and rushed to add, “I didn’t do it, Harry.” The door to the coffee shop opened and closed, making them both jump, like they were having some kind of clandestine meeting. But they weren’t, Harry reminded himself. He could talk to his alleged blackmailer if he wanted to.

“They know it,” she insisted. “Otherwise, why wasn’t I fired _and_ arrested? Blackmail is some serious shit, right?”

“I guess,” Harry allowed.

“Just...I know you don’t have to believe me, but I wish you would.” She wilted a little. Harry had never seen her look so gutted, though in a way that just made her ever-present fire easier to notice. She shrugged into the coat that she’d been holding and drifted toward the door, but paused to look over her shoulder before going out. “Sorry about the vote.”

The raw wound in Harry’s chest twinged. “Thanks.”

Harry knew it was silly to even entertain Lavender’s arguments. He should be calling Hermione or Agent Brad, probably. And anyway, it couldn’t be Violet. Over the weeks of wondering who the blackmailer could be, Violet was the furthest person from his mind.

But then again, Lavender hadn’t been on his radar either.

And what did he actually know about Violet?

He thought through what he knew of her: quiet, often wore glasses, encouraging, always seemed to be on Harry’s side. She was close to him at all times even before she became his designated assistant producer, back when she should have been spreading herself more thinly over a larger number of contestants.

He couldn’t think of a thing he knew about her, personally, though he always tended to invite that kind of information from people. She’d deflected so neatly though that he hadn’t realized til now that she’d sidestepped his every question. He knew how many cats Mo had and the different types of food he had to dish out to satisfy each one of them, and he knew that Ariel shared a wall with neighbors whose infant was teething.

He wasn’t sure he knew anything about Violet, except for the way she held her clipboard up in front of her face sometimes when she was talking to him, making it hard to understand what she was saying. He’d laugh fondly and remind her to “ _lower the sound barrier._ ”

(He’d had a few brief daydreams he wasn’t proud of about her and Lavender, too, but that wasn’t relevant.) 

He couldn’t shake the look on Lavender’s face, and his own irrepressible instinct that she was telling him the truth. He went into the one-unit bathroom, latched the door and called Agent Brad.

  
  
  
{{Harry’s tattoo! Art by [trashgoblinwizardparty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashgoblinwizardparty/pseuds/trashgoblinwizardparty)}}

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Before we go, I need to show you your present.”
> 
> Harry looked at him, curious. “I thought my present was...er...you know…”
> 
> Tom looked incredulous. “The rimming? Please. Let’s not be one of those couples.”
> 
> A switch connected to Harry’s head seemed to have flipped at Tom using the word “couple,” and he didn’t hear the next thing Tom said until he repeated himself.


	25. The Elective, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final regular chapter! Epilogue in 24 hours!
> 
> Thank you thank you thank you my friends! ❤️ Hope you like it.

Harry had planned to go to the project site, but apparently it was closed off. He tried not to be sad about not getting to say goodbye to the house, and answered Ron’s “heads up” text.

**Ron W: just a heads up we would have gone to the project site per usual but I guess it’s closed off? So we r at the shop.**

**Harry: See you in 10.**

It was satisfying to greet the solemn crew with the drink carrier, bag of scones and a chipper, “Who’s hungry?” but the joke didn’t get Harry very far. He still had to hug Seamus four times, listen politely to Dean’s diatribe, and pretend to mull over the mystery of Lavender’s sudden absence.

The twins ate scones and didn’t comment until Dean and Seamus left, then Fred dusted the crumbs off his hand and patted Harry’s head with it, ignoring his sharp, “Hey!”

“No one would find the crumbs in that bird’s nest,” George reassured him. “Except maybe the birds.”

“You don’t even make sense,” Harry said, slapping at Fred’s arm in a silly midair joust that eventually made him laugh harder than was really proportionate to the joke. That was how it was with the twins.

“We’re going to go raid craft services before they figure out we’re imposters,” Fred said. “Bye, loser.” He kissed Harry noisily on one cheek, George kissed the other, and they headed for the half-open overhead door. The shop was mostly empty. What wasn’t earmarked for the last few elective projects had been cleared out. In another couple of days it would just be an empty space and the whole site village would be nothing but tamped-down grass.

Ron and Harry were alone. Harry waved to the twins a final time and walked back over to him. 

“You know, if you’re ever in Chicago, you should call me.”

Ron’s smile was tentative, but bright. “And if you’re in LA, call me?”

Harry considered admitting he’d be in LA imminently, but thought better of it. “Yeah, sounds good. We have to stay in touch anyway, since you’re my manager.”

Ron’s grin faltered, then came back stronger. “Officially?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“A wise decision. I’m going to be really good at it, I’m sure.”

Harry laughed. “I’m sure too.”

“Even though,” Ron said, looking unsure again, “it’s not going to be my only job.”

“Obviously. I mean, I’m going to be pleasantly surprised if there’s anything for you to do in my corner at all, besides maybe helping me decide whether to finally set my hourly rate above minimum wage.”

Ron winced. “I hope you’re kidding. Right. You’re not. Well, we are going to talk about that really soon, but first I do want to tell you I got a new position with CLN. I’m going to be a producer.”

“Ron!” Forgetting the awkwardness from a moment before, Harry shoved his right shoulder as hard as he could, then his left. Then,  _ fuck it _ , he hugged Ron hard around the neck just for a second, before he could evade.

When they separated, Ron looked surprised but happy. “Thanks. I’m kind of in shock about it. But I think it’s going to be good.”

“Definitely.”

“I’m still really sorry about the vote, though.”

This time the reminder didn’t cause Harry more than a pang. “Me too. I’m still excited to see the finale though. Dean thinks Amanda’s elective is going to be a detached greenhouse?”

***

Amanda’s elective  _ was _ a detached greenhouse, and that night it was cold enough to paint every pane with frost so that the white lights she’d strung inside looked achingly beautiful through the camera lens.

Harry couldn’t even be mad. She was a pro. She deserved the win. 

And things had turned out pretty well for Harry, too, he reminded himself, watching voting results live in Tom’s neglected trailer, sprawled on the full-sized couch with his feet in Tom’s lap. Tom had baffled Harry by inviting him over after the live portion finished filming.

“I’m allowed guests,” he’d said simply, and led Harry past a host of staring production staff by the hand. It was horribly embarrassing and strangely satisfying. 

Then Tom fucked Harry roughly on the same couch, and Harry forgot to be quiet, which was only mildly embarrassing and intensely satisfying. 

Harry’s best Christmas Eve, hands down.

***

“Before we go, I need to show you your present.”

Harry looked at him, curious. “I thought my present was...er...you know. What you did this morning.”

Tom looked incredulous. “The rimming? Please. Let’s not be one of  _ those _ couples.”

A switch connected to Harry’s head seemed to have flipped at Tom using the word “couple,” and he didn’t hear the next thing Tom said until he repeated himself.

“This isn’t your present either,” he said, putting a coat on Harry’s shoulders that clearly wasn’t Tom’s. The shoulders were narrower and it smelled like plain starched wool, with no hint of Tom’s cologne.

“My own fancy black coat,” Harry said, grinning. “If you give me something, it’s a present. Just so you know.”

Tom raked Harry’s wrist with his fingernail in reprimand. “It’s not your  _ only _ present, then. Come on.”

Even wearing the coat, it was cold enough that Harry was glad to get into the car. He attempted a grateful smile at the driver and received icy silence in reply.

Well, he’d tried.

“Wait,” Harry said after two turns. “This is the way to…”

“Your project. Yes. Outstanding powers of deduction.”

On the curb, Harry searched the house for signs of difference, but the front elevation was just as Harry had designed it and left it. He followed Tom inside.

Someone had swept up, but otherwise it was the same inside too. He trailed after Tom, who paused in the kitchen and scanned the room with a regretful frown.

“If we didn’t have a flight to make, I’d fuck you in here somewhere. Such a waste.”

Harry had just come twice in the last hour but he could have been talked into a third round. They’d never christened the kitchen. Tom dropped the subject though, guiding him back into the hallway toward the living room.

The light was wrong. It was almost like someone had left a light on; this part of the house should have been entirely dark but instead swelled with a definite low light. Unless…

Harry turned the corner and moved into the spill of moonlight that was falling unfiltered through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the restored solarium.

“You…” Harry breathed.

“Before you fuss about it,” Tom said, tucking Harry’s hand through his elbow, “I also paid the property taxes for the future owner for the next three years. You see? Balance. The beautiful and the practical don’t  _ have _ to be at odds.”

Harry didn’t want to argue. The moon, just waning, was perfectly framed by the uppermost pane of glass. All the original mosaic floor tile was patched. The room was perfectly beautiful, exactly as it was meant to be. Just for the moment he was willing to agree that yes, results this spectacular justified a high price.

***

“Since I got my gift early and I don’t know if this will even go through security,” Harry said, rifling through his duffel bag while Tom stood by the trunk of the car wrinkling his nose at Harry’s messy luggage, “here’s yours.”

He pulled out the light fixture, tugging it free of the old t-shirt he’d wound around it for safekeeping. “I’d planned to use it in the solarium.”

Tom took it from him. Harry thought he caught a smile as he tilted it back and forth, inspecting it. “It could have been a statement in that room.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Did you know contestants and crew aren’t allowed to salvage from the project sites? It was in your contract.” Tom glanced up at Harry.

“Um, yeah. I know.” He ruffled the hair on the back of his head. “I snuck it out.”

Now Tom grinned, sharply; he tucked the glass fixture under his arm. “I love it.”

Harry snorted. “Because I stole it for you?”

Tom winked at him and got in the car. He didn’t answer, but that was alright. Harry supposed It was a rhetorical question really.

***

Just before they boarded their flight, Agent Brad called Harry.

“Hi Harry,” he said, sounding less chipper than Harry remembered. “I just wanted to update you. Got a sec?”

Harry held up a finger toward Tom, who was waiting for him at the doors to the first class lounge where he’d talked Harry into drinking one of the cocktails from the menu. It has been Christmas-themed, garnished with cranberries.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“You were right. Someone doctored the phone records. I can’t figure out where in the chain of possession it happened but the blackmailer must be more than just some kid who wanted an easy pay day. Lavender has been released.”

“So—was it Violet?” Harry had been afraid to ask around and rouse suspicion while he was at the site village today but he thought it was telling that Violet wasn’t around.

“We haven’t found any evidence of that besides Ms. Brown’s opinion.”

Harry felt a little bereft. “So whoever it is might call me again with more threats.”

“Maybe,” Agent Brad agreed. “But the show’s over. You didn’t win—sorry about that by the way. And it’s not a photo of a secret affair anymore, right? Maybe the stakes are different.”

Harry hadn’t thought of it quite like that. Tom was pointing at his watch. “Thanks, Agent. I’ve got to go.”

“Merry Christmas Harry.”

A tide of whispers followed Harry and Tom through the terminal. He saw a few people hold up phones for pictures and video, and he was glad he’d let Tom dress him in Sasha’s clothes.

Harry thought of what Agent Brad said over and over, sitting in his massive reclining seat across from Tom. Meanwhile Tom scowled out the window at the tarmac full of other jets and made grumbling comments about the toils of flying commercial.

“Are we…?” Harry blurted eventually, then trailed off when Tom looked at him. He cleared his throat. “Is this still a secret?”

Just in case anyone else tried to blackmail him over it Harry thought he should know.

Tom seemed surprised. He glanced at the neighboring seat where a young man with pierced cartilage was doing a bad job pretending not to listen to them. And he had his phone in his lap, angled not-so-subtly with the camera lens pointed at them.

“ _ Hey _ ,” Harry hissed, glaring at the kid, but Tom leaning over him interrupted him. He felt strong, cool fingers on his chin and turned his head just in time to receive Tom’s kiss.

It was quick but like all Tom’s kisses, heated. A branding, a promise. “No,” he said against the corner of Harry’s mouth before pulling away.

Tom leaned back in his seat again, and the jet began accelerating down the runway for takeoff. Harry couldn’t even find it in himself to worry if their nosy neighbor had gotten a photo.


	26. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the end of Chapter 24 for art of Harry’s tattoo! ❤️

“I’m so happy for you,” Hermione said, squeezing Ron's waist hard for emphasis. He smothered another happy laugh in her hair, then leaned back and blinked down at her, suddenly solemn.

“Do you think it’ll be weird? To be, I don’t know, in the same field. Both of us in production, and both at CLN. I never expected that.”

Hermione smiled uncertainly, taking two handfuls of the lumpy sweater he’d put on before they left for his parents’, the one with the “R” on the front. “It wouldn’t be weird. But actually we won’t work together. Because I’m resigning from CLN.”

Ron straightened out his arms, pushing her away from him so quickly she might have stumbled if she couldn’t lean on that same warm grip, chuckling.

“What? What happened?” 

“It’s nothing bad. I got another job offer.”

“Holy shit. It must be a really good one.”

Hermione nodded, a little shy. “I think so. That network Tom Riddle announced? He wants me there as an executive.”

The same smile that Ron had on his face when he’d announced his own good news was back, but Hermione could tell that her opportunity was the only one on his mind in this moment. “That’s amazing. Congratulations.”

Hermione pulled them back together and nuzzled his chest. The sweater was definitely horrible-looking and lumpy, but it was also incredibly soft. She could almost understand why he not-so-secretly liked it.

“Merry Christmas,” Ron said, leaning to and fro slowly so that they rocked to and fro. “I...um…”

Hermione arched her neck so she could peer up into his face. “I love you, too.”

Ron looked mystified. A tiny smile formed on the corner of his mouth. “So competitive. Always first at everything.” He nudged her hair back from her face and brushed her cheek with his thumb. “I didn’t even say it.”

“Yes you did.”

****

The contrast between Puerto Vallarta and Ohio was comical. The warmth, white sand, and turquoise waters aside, everything was literally blooming. The trees were draped with flowering vines. Lush shrubbery hemmed the roadways and sidewalks. Possibilities were endless. It seemed the ultimate proof that Violet’s efforts in dismal Ohio were meant to bring her here, the beginning of a future full of far more possibilities than doing grunt work in a greed-driven industry ever could.

She was on the third story of the resort hotel, eating a fresh pineapple that tasted so good, she couldn’t believe it didn’t have another name. There was an empty chair across from her at the two-seater. She set down her fork with a clatter when someone slid into it, struggling to summon a puzzled smile.

“I’m sorry, but I’m eating alone,” she said as politely as she could manage. The man was unfamiliar. Past middle-age, with white hair that was surprisingly long for a man his age wearing a conservative long-sleeved collared shirt and dark jeans. He looked at her solemnly. His eyes were a blue so light, they were unnerving.

“I know you didn’t invite me, ma’am. Mr. Riddle sent me,” he explained, looking like he regretted it. 

Violet felt like a stinging wind was swirling around her, pricking the skin on every inch of her body in a faint all-over pain. “I don’t know why he would do that. Our business concluded yesterday.”

He paid her. He’d paid her and agreed they’d let Lavender take the fall, so production wouldn’t keep looking for her or penalize him for the payoff— he’d…

He’d never intended to pay her off and forget about it, apparently.

“I’ll need you to come with me, ma’am,” said the man. He exuded a certain dangerous energy despite his solemn manner and his slight build. It didn’t occur to her to argue with him, or to run. She stood silently on numb feet and followed where he led.

A waiter came by to clear the table, wrinkling his nose to find the dish of fresh pineapple practically untouched. _What a waste,_ he thought, emptying it into the bussing bin. _But then, that’s tourists for you_.

****

Watching Harry race from one room to the next was adorable, but also tiring. Tom’s knees weren’t what they used to be, and it had been a long flight.

Harry looked exactly as good in the house as Tom had known he would. Flooded with sunlight in every room, his dark hair framed by the white walls and glass. Perhaps Tom hadn’t managed to have Harry in every room of the bungalow where they’d met, but he planned to have him in every room of his home before the New Year. Twice.

“So,” Harry said, turning eagerly to Tom. They were outside now, on the veranda that spilled over onto the beach. Harry’s eyes practically sparkled with refracted light. “You’ve met her, then?”

Tom should have seen this coming. Of course Harry was a fan.

“Yes, naturally. She’s a friend.”

Harry smiled so wide he almost looked pained. “Oh my God. I mean, I figured, since like, this is the kind of house you don’t just sell. You _entrust_ it.”

Tom couldn’t keep his hands to himself any longer. He reached for Harry and felt a fierce satisfaction when Harry moved automatically into the circle of Tom’s arms and slid his own hands around Tom’s waist, gazing at the house with naked infatuation.

So long as that look was reserved for houses, Tom could bear it.

“Maybe we’ll have them over for dinner,” Tom suggested, kissing below Harry’s ear. Harry’s Chicago-acclimatized body was overly warm in the December sunshine of LA. But his sweat had a clean salt scent, almost inseparable from the ocean breeze.

“Are you serious?”

Tom kissed him again on the curve of muscle where his neck met his shoulder, restraining, for now, the urge to bite and mark. 

“Perfectly,” he murmured, letting Harry go. “We’re going to share everything.”

For a moment Harry’s eyes narrowed. With the sun in his eyelashes, Tom saw how they were even longer than they looked in normal light; black at the roots and fading to near-invisibility at the tips where they nearly brushed the delicate skin under his eyebrows.

Tom waited, catching his breath, but Harry’s moment on the brink of insight passed. He looked at Tom and clearly saw ordinary romance, nothing more. He grinned, walking backward and stripping off his t-shirt.

“Does that mean you’re going to come swim with me?” He tossed his shirt aside and turned, watching Tom over his shoulder, not-so-innocently displaying the stark lines of the tattoo.

“Oh, yes,” Tom grinned and winked, as though teasing. “I’ll follow you anywhere. An ocean couldn’t stop me.”

With a laugh, Harry kicked off his shoes and ran. Tom pursued.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:
> 
> _Fan favorite voted off? Our insider, who must remain anonymous, tells us how it could happen on page 10_
> 
> _Harry Potter Tell-All: Cats or dogs? Boxers or briefs? Cousin Dudley gives exclusive insight into the mysterious breakout star_
> 
> _CLN makes record-setting offer to Potter for new series; Potter says “no thanks” as independent blog’s success continues to skyrocket_
> 
> _One year later, Potter tattoo rivals celtic knot for most-requested design at 8/10 tattoo parlors according to informal poll_
> 
> _Wedding bells and signatures— a business merger, not a pre-nup, kicks off Riddle-Potter union as the mega-celebrity couple announces groundbreaking new channel_
> 
> A/N 
> 
> THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart. I’ve been blown away by the response to this fic.
> 
> And if you noticed the clues and got curious, I modeled Tom’s home after my favorite house, a property in LA owned by Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi, and I’m so sorry to both of them for dragging them into this sin. 
> 
> Merry xmas all. <3 <3 <3


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